in a national television address to the american people. he's expected to call for more congressionalfunding for the wall to end a partial government shutdown which is now in its third week. here in britain, a no—deal brexit could have got much less likely. the government has been defeated in parliament — with mps voting for an amendment designed to thwart preparations for a no—deal departure. and this story is trending on bbc.com. the australian actress margot robbie is to play barbie in a new film about the iconic doll. it's the first time the toy‘s been brought to the big screen — in what's going to be a big yearfor her — barbie turns 60 in march. that's all. stay with bbc news. now on bbc news, hardtalk‘s stephen sackur speaks to dr william frankland, allergist and wwii prisoner of war in singapore. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur.

over the years, i've come face—to—face with many remarkable individuals. but my guest today, dr william frankland, is unique, both in terms of his longevity and his extraordinary experiences. he is a world—renowned expert on allergies. he is also one of the last remaining british survivors of the japanese prisoner of war camps in world war ii. his is a death—defying, life—affirming story. at the age of 106, what keeps him going? dr bill frankland, welcome to hardtalk.

let me ask you first, what took you into the world of medicine? because you said something very interesting. you said that one reason you chose to be a doctor, even though your parents had no tradition in medicine, was because you've always taken a great interest in people. yes. is that still true today? that's very true. i was — when i would see ill patients, to me, that was a patient with an illness, which had to be helped in some way. but whether — like my most grateful patient, i said it doesn't matter whether your head is a slate, i treat you as a patient, and i hope you follow my advice. so you chose your career, you went to oxford, you trained

as a doctor. and then, still in your 20s, the second world war broke out, and on the eve of the war, before the war had actually been declared, i believe you made the decision to sign up. it seems you were eager to go to war. why? no, i thought it was my place, and in fact i'm very pro—british, and so on. so i thought i might be called up, and i was going to be called up. i had been in emergency and i had done what was called cmp, civil military partnership. i had donejobs at tidworth for a month. this was to earn money, as well as everything else. but i thought, there's going to be a war, so i made arrangements oni september 1939.

i went into the army. that's — and war was declared on 3 september. and it wasn't until november that i, and in fact the surgeon, who was an australian, we came up to the british medical association in london and said, what can we do? we want to get into the army in uniform. we don't want to be a civilian all the time. and he just said, say that you're a gp, fill out the form, and you'll get into the army quickly. and this is what we did. it's an extraordinary story. and of course, by 1941, you'd been shipped out in the medical corps to singapore, to work as a young doctor, helping the people of what was then, of course, a british colony, but a british colony which was threatened by the japanese. and, toward the end of 1941, the japanese took singapore. it was an extraordinarily

difficult and bloody time. how lucky do you believe you were to survive? well, i was very lucky to survive. of course, when we arrived, and our journey took actually two hours — two months to get to singapore from liverpool, three days after we'd been there, a man came from — a british officer came from headquarters and said, now you two officers must start working, and there are two hospitals that you should go to. the officer put his hand in his pocket, took out a coin, spun it and said frankland, call it. and i called heads, and it was heads, so i went where i wanted to go. well, the other doctor went to — as an anaesthetist to queen alexandra military hospital.

and when the japanese came over, they murdered, is the word, the patients when they reached the hospitals, the patients in the operating theatre, and then all the other people. but the coin toss saved your life, because the other officer, who lost the coin toss and went to the alexandra hospital, he was killed. he was killed. he had an awful death, because putting a bayonet through the chest, they did it all through his abdomen. even though he was a doctor in a doctor's uniform. it was absolutely no difference at all, and they murdered some of the and nurses, and so on. and patients too. i suppose that tells us about the brutality of the japanese invasion of singapore. and you then were exposed to the brutality of the japanese prisoner of war camps.

you were held in two — changi, and then the island off singapore that was known as hell's island. that sounds like a truly unbearable existence. you were there for more than two years. how did you get through it? i just don't know. there were all these other people there, and i was just one of them. i compared it to when they came back from the railway, the death railway, where there was a 40% mortality. that is where the prisoners were forced by the japanese to build this railway through the jungle. yes, so... i was actually detailed to go on that. but for some reason, seven days before i went up the country to go on the railway, they removed my name and said, no, i was a more suitable doctor, to go to this island, sembawang, or hell island.

hell island. i mean, to be frank, you were in a sense lucky in that you were a doctor. you had medical skills, and the japanese recognised that. and as i understand it, amid all the suffering in the camp, with the starvation rations, the malnutrition, the terrible fevers, dengue fever, beriberi, as well as malaria, you're virtually starved, but you're still doing the doctoring, both of inmates, the prisoners of war, but sometimes of the japanese as well. the japanese every now and again would bring something — would we treat them, depending on what it was. they knew theirjapanese doctor was useless, and they — well, let's see the prisoner of war doctors. so they would come to me. but how did you feel about that? these were prison guards and prison

camp officers who were abusing, brutalising, you and your fellow inmates, and yet here they were sometimes asking for your help. yes. the answer was, what have they got, and could we take at least half of it, or more? so it might be a medicine that we wanted. so occasionally we would treat them. so i guess yourfocusjust had to be on survival, pure and simple. at all times. now that you look back on it, and of course it is many, many years ago, do you believe you came close to death in that camp? not in — well, i will say there were three times at least that i thought i was going to die, but there was only once in that camp. i think it's — it's been described... their policy was that if our men misbehaved,

and they were always stealing food, then they would have — be bashed. but in the evening parade, we as officers were lined up, and we were also bashed, because we hadn't looked after the men well enough to tell them that they shouldn't steal food. you mean, when you say bashed, you mean physically beaten? physically. and once on the island, when i was bashed, i was knocked unconscious by this. and i can't remember anything about this, and how long i was on the ground.

but i do remember, when i'd recovered, halfway back to the mess where we were going, i met the officer captain matthews, who was in charge, and i said that's the best bashing i ever had, because i never felt a thing. i knew i'd been bashed, because i just spat out a molar, or whatever it was. he said, you were very, very lucky to be alive. we thought we'd lost you, doctor. i said, why? he said, when you got up, you staggered with your hands, and they were first like that, towards the japanese officer who had hit you. and of course, that would certainly be... and there was a japanese privatejust by him, and he was just going to put his bayonet through my chest. and for some reason, and i don't know why, the officer stopped him doing it. and that's why they thought it was the end of me. it might have been. if i had bashed the officer, of course, it certainly would have been the end. i was lucky that one of my — i think of a guardian angel that looks after me, and that was one of the occasions, when that man came up and he didn't put a bayonet through my chest.

well, thanks to that guardian angel, or something, you did survive. so many men did not, but you made it through that hellish experience. and ijust wonder now, and in all of the years since, did it damage you, that terrible experience? well, i would say a very definite no. but in fact, when i got back to england, finally, i decided that i would never talk about anything that had happened to me. i wanted to start a new life, and not look backwards. and this — so my wife and children knew nothing about my experience as a prisoner of war, at all. you mean nothing at all? you didn't tell them... i didn't talk about it. it was something i wanted to forget, and i wanted to look in the future, and not in the past.

i think the main difference is, a lot of these people who were worried very much by what had happened, they were — and it still happens to this day, of course, they were very worried, and they got depressed. and i've never, luckily, got depressed. so there was something in me that decides, not depression, and i think that's made a terrific difference. i mean, can you honestly say, after all of that experience, that you had no hate, you had no anger in your heart for the people who did all of this to you and your friends and comrades? well, i've actually... this word hate that you use, and i say i go right back to the time i was aged about nine, and i had a severe disagreement with my twin brother. i can'd remember what it was about. and my father found me. what was i doing was treading on his strawberries, because we each had a little bit of the garden that was ours.

and he said, what are you doing? and i said, i'm trying to destroy these strawberries, because i hate my brother. and my father said, you must never, ever use that word again. and so, when people afterwards said you must hate the japanese, and asked publicly, isaid no, my father told me never to use that word. and the reason given, of course — we're told as christians that it was love and not hate, and that's what i've always said. so it was. and if you hate someone, it does you harm. it doesn't do them any harm at all. let's move on from the war and those unimaginable experiences. you said you were not depressed, you did not have psychiatric

problems, you went back to medicine very quickly, you quickly rose up the ladder through your research and medical expertise. and you decided to specialise in allergies. why were you so attracted to, fascinated by allergies? well, when we got back from the war, a st mary's surgeon, he was in europe and so on, he had promised that doctors who have been prisoners of war could go back to their teaching hospital, mine was st mary's in paddington. there were various days when i was free, doing nothing. i saw on the door — of what was called the inoculation department at that time — a notice. they wanted a doctor two mornings in the allergy clinic, two mornings a week and one afternoon. and i was free, so i thought all right, and i went in to do that, and after six weeks working in the allergies department i said

to my chief, could it be full—time? the reason i went in was by chance. i want to quickly talk to you about the thing, most people will be the greatest benefit they have got from your research, deep into allergies, you became increasingly convinced that it would be very useful, given the amount of asthma, the amount of allergic reactions people were getting to the air they were breathing and the pollen in the air, you decided it was very important to measure, properly measure the amount of pollen in the air, which, ultimately, gave rise to the daily pollen count, which we now see in most countries of the world as an official measure. how proud do you feel about the spread of the pollen count? rather sadly, i don't feel...

people say you are responsible for the newspapers and radio and television, saying what the daily pollen count is, and you sorted it, and i don't think this was necessary. having done pollen counts daily and because people are very vague about, if you ask their history. "when did your symptoms start?" "in the spring." spring in america is different from spring in england. so i wanted to track time. and they measure it wrong quite often. we saw a lot of people getting tree pollen sensitive and so on. and other things. your work, collection of specific pollen counts and asthma and various conditions, it has been very important. do you suffer from hay fever yourself? yes, i do.

do you think that is a reason you were so interested in it? it is not a reason at all. although i had it for 90 years and have grown out of it without treatment. no, here is a complaint that we could give a good result if we got the history right. one of the things i used to do on a saturday, find out when people came back and had a bad history, why do they have a bad history, it was fascinating to go back and find the reason. what is also fascinating is the degree to which the studies suggest that allergies of all types, but particularly airborne problems connected to both pollen, but to pollution, and then one can look at food allergies, it seems more people now suffering from various food allergies from nuts to gluten to all sorts of things, it is tempting, almost, to believe that more and more people are becoming allergic to the 21st century environment around them. why do you think more and more people appear to be

suffering from allergies? well, in all countries it looks as though it's happening for various reasons. one of the reasons is the so—called hygiene hypothesis. if babies are born in very clean places and so on... well, we have to think of a cow. a cow must feed its calf to give it all the antibodies. if a baby's living in a very clean place it doesn't get, from an immunological point of view, it's not getting protection. it brings me to a very interesting element of your research over the years. you were a doctor who always seemed to believe in the notion of desensitisation, that is exposing people to a little bit, a little, little bit

of what was causing them problems in the hope that it would allow the body to build up its own natural resistances. i believe i'm right in saying that one point in your career you exposed yourself to tropical insects and the kinds of bites they had in the hope that you could use yourself as a test case of how the body would react. yes. the reason i did this — i'm an allergic person, but if a mosquito bites me or a bug of any sort of bites me, i have found this interesting, to sit in a chair and you find your buttocks are itching and so on, and so i wanted to know what is the natural history of these insect bites. at the time i had never been to south america. and i therefore got an insect that is quite common in north or south america, and some of the southern states of the usa, and i had never met before.

i got it from the school of tropical medicine in london. and every monday morning, i kept it in a test tube, i let it have a feed from me, it's a very slow feeder. and so i could follow the whole process of this insect in me, what happens. and the first time it had its mealfrom me — all these insects, just before they take their blood from you, they put in a tiny bit of their own saliva, this is what causes the trouble. anyway, the first bite that it had from me — no response at all. and that's what one would expect, because i ‘d never met it before. second bite, yes, a delayed response. and that got more and more, larger and larger every week, until my arm was, on the fifth bite, swollen for three days from the bite.

and so by the eighth bite the question was, i was hoping i might be desensitised and nothing would happen, but to be absolutely certain i went into the side ward of the hospital to see what happened. it produced, i remember taking the cotton ball out, it ran down the test tube and began its meal. and then five or six minutes, the nurse who was my blood pressure said "the machine is broken". and i felt my pulse. well, i hadn't got a pulse. and then i realised my face was swelling up and my body was swelling up and i couldn't speak. you were in full—scale prophylaxis shock. so basically you nearly killed yourself? i nearly did, yes. but in fact, very luckily, the nurse ran out to find the sister of the ward to come along. and i remember she came

to see me and she said, "0h, you've done some silly experiment, that's why you wanted this room. what you require is ephedrine and i'll give you 1cc. i'llgive you 0.3, that is what you want." and i must say, just before she gave it to me i had what the textbooks call ‘a feeling of impending doom'. in other words, you think yo‘re going to die. you thought you were going to die! i thought i was going to die. and she gave me this injection. and in about one minute and a half i decided i'm not going to die. well, thank goodness you didn't. that story of how you, as a research doctor, almost killed yourself, it will stay with me for a long time. but before we finish i want to ask you this — you are extraordinary, because here you sit with me, you are the oldest guest i have ever interviewed on hardtalk, at 106, and yet physically and mentally you're in it terrific shape. people around the world will want to know how you have

stayed so fit, mentally and physically, for so long. ijust say it's luck. i've been so near death so many times and because i've missed these occasions, i'm very, very lucky. the other thing is, i try and keep my brain going. in fact, i wrote four academic papers between 100 and 105. two of them entirely myself and others were multiple authors, and so on. but this, when i'm 107, i have two more papers i'm going to write. oh my goodness. and i've nearly finished one of them. i don't get the impression that you've lost your love of life. no. at present, i don't want to die. i want these two

articles to come out. i'll be proud of those. well, dr bill frankland, it has been a real privilege to talk to you. thank you for being on hardtalk. well, thank you too. hello there. high tides combined with brisk winds to give a little bit of coastal flooding across some parts of eastern england on tuesday. there were some showers as well, you can see the way these speckled shower clouds were racing from north to south, blown along on those strong winds. and the winds will still be quite brisk across the east on wednesday, still quite a few isobars, white lines on the chart. further west, high pressure builds in, the winds fall lighter. but we do have a weak frontal system

into the north—west. that'll bring some cloud and some patchy rain, but it will also usher in some slightly milder air. so this is how we start wednesday morning. quite windy, particularly in the east. those winds feeding some showers into eastern coasts of england. for many places, we're looking at a dry day, with some good spells of sunshine. but cloud will be thickening all the while in northern ireland and the western side of scotland, and here, we will see some patchy rain as that warm front starts to push its way in, but temperatures will start to rise. nine degrees there in stornoway. a little bit chillier from aberdeen down to glasgow, but here, we'll hold onto some brightness. northern ireland clouding over as the day wears on. and then across england and wales, many places fine with some sunshine. temperatures of five to eight degrees but it will be quite windy, particularly in the east. that wind feeding some showers into eastern coastal areas, and also making it feel a little bit colder than those temperatures suggest. but as we go through wednesday night, you can see on the map more cloud toppling south eastwards, but also milder air with it.

so a frost on thursday morning, likely to be confined to north—west england, the midlands, wales, and down towards the south—west. most other places will be starting thursday above freezing, but it will be pretty cloudy for most of us. where we have that chilly start in the south, that's where we're likely to have the best of the sunshine through the day. north—east england and north—east scotland also doing quite well for brightness and sunshine. but elsewhere, a lot of cloud, maybe the odd spot of drizzle, still quite chilly in the south, but those temperatures climbing across north—western parts of the uk. and more and more of us see that milder air spreading in as we get on into friday. still large slabs of cloud floating around, some spells of sunshine as well, and temperature wise, we're looking at highs of eight to 10 degrees. now, as we head towards the start of the weekend, an area of low pressure is going to pass just to the north of the british isles. this frontal system bringing some outbreaks of rain in northern areas on friday night, into the first part

of saturday, but that will tend to clear away, actually, leaving us with a lot of dry weather through the weekend. it will be fairly mild, fairly windy as well, and there is the chance of some rain at times in the north. this is newsday on the bbc. i'm rico hizon in singapore. the headlines: donald trump prepares to appeal directly to americans to support a mexico border wall and end the government shutdown — its impact is biting hard. if we were more appreciated, then this whole situation wouldn't exist. we wouldn't be held hostage for whatever anybody wants. mps inflict a brexit defeat on the british government, thwarting the possibility of leaving europe without a deal. i'm babita sharma in london. also in the programme: the mystery of the missing north korean ambassador continues. now a former colleague urges jo song—gil to defect to the south.