Advertise on podcast: How To Be 60 with Kaye Adams

On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Vanessa Feltz, who was supposed to be winding down when we last spoke four years ago. Instead, at 64, she has launched her own YouTube show, where guests join her on her bed, and is running a business for the first time in her life. After 38 years of bosses telling her what she couldn’t do, she is the one making the calls now, and she loves it. She talks about nearly four years on her own after a lifetime of never being single for more than a few weeks, and why she counts that as progress. She tells the story of meeting a date on a Tube escalator. And she explains why every year she has lived beyond her mum, who died at 57, feels like a bonus. At Home with Vanessa is on YouTube now, and you can still hear her on LBC. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week’s Midweek Catchup, we read out your verdicts on Kate Mulvey and her Sicilian, including one email so cross it ended with a Godfather reference. Most of you are with Karen. Kaye, meanwhile, has been quietly trying out compromise. She went to watch Ian play tennis. She said nothing when he ate the Russian salad. Whether either counts as progress is up for debate. Karen is back in the family home with her sister, who has done the impossible and converted her to tofu. Kaye has discovered her own central heating, and Ian has discovered the new hob, two months after it was fitted. Plus, Kaye asked national television whether she should go grey, and 62% said yes. Find out whether Vanessa Feltz would ever do it on this week’s episode. Get in touch with your thoughts at [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week’s episode, we’re joined by writer Kate Mulvey, whose summer romance began with a kiss under an erupting Etna and ended over breakfast in bed. At 64, Kate has made something of a speciality of examining her own 60s, and she doesn’t spare herself. She talks about the miscarriage at 41 that made her realise she had a lifestyle but not a life, the flowers she crushed by asking for olive oil instead, and the light-blocking, earplug-wearing sleep regime that may have cost her a man. Kate is fiercely independent and, by her own admission, a little uncompromising. Karen wanted to slap her. Kaye thinks there’s an act two coming. A friend told her she wakes at 3am worrying she’s been too safe, while Kate worries she’s been too wild. So which is it? We want to know what you think Kate should do next. Get in touch with your thoughts at [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week’s Midweek Catchup, we’ve swapped places. Kaye is sunbathing on a Spanish beach at the end of October, and Karen is back in stormy Scotland with a freshly re-broken toe, courtesy of a sunbed leg. There’s the flight home through the storm that nobody wants to repeat, Donna May bullying Kaye into a sea that was more Atlantic than Mediterranean, and a run of mysterious Amazon orders that turn out to be a Halloween costume in progress. Duck feathers, a tutu and a lace-up silk bodice. Make of that what you will. The Bananagram feud also takes a turn when Sue defects to Karen’s side. We read your emails too. Shirley in Melbourne published a book for her 60th and wants to know who we turn to for advice, and Jackie writes with real honesty about what a teenager’s mental health struggles do to the whole family. On Friday, journalist Kate Mulvey met a man in Sicily, felt the whoosh, then watched it go sour. Should she get back in touch? Kaye says yes. Karen is less sure. We want your verdict once you’ve heard her out. Get in touch with your thoughts at [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Amanda Prowse, who says she found her power at 50 thanks to an Instagram post about birthday cake. The bestselling novelist wasn’t published until her forties, and she talks about the fear that ran her life before that, losing her brother Simon, and why she now thinks getting older is a privilege. She also talks about The Boy Between, the book she wrote with her son Josh about his depression, and what she got wrong trying to fix it. There’s the question from a therapist that changed how she saw him, her grief for her dogs Dottie and Bo, and a lifelong ambition to drive a lorry. Her latest novel, The Way Home, is out now. Get in touch with your thoughts at [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week’s Midweek Catchup, we read out a listener’s mum’s diary of good deeds, including the day she cleaned her husband’s toothbrush and warmed his feet. Karen is calling in from Spain, where she has been recognised three times since leaving home and is not handling it quietly. Kaye is in a London hotel, having forgotten her room number and tried most of the doors on the third floor. Kaye also owns up to a crisis of conscience about colouring her hair. With so many women going grey, does carrying on with the dye mean letting the side down? Karen has a theory, and it involves eyelashes. We also look ahead to Friday’s episode with bestselling author Amanda Prowse, who talks frankly about parenting adult children. Get in touch with your thoughts at [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's episode, we're joined by clinical psychologist and broadcaster Professor Tanya Byron, of The House of Tiny Tearaways fame. She's six months off 60 and celebrating all year with friends she's known since she was 11. Tanya wrote much of her new book, You Are Not a Diagnosis, at her mother's bedside. Her mum lived with Alzheimer's, the long goodbye, and was in Tanya's words a model of courage, acceptance and distress tolerance. When her father died, Tanya wanted a diagnosis of depression so she could be cured. What she had was grief. She tells Kaye and Karen why we rush to pathologise ordinary feelings, why we've lost the why and gone straight to the what, and how getting back to real conversation might help. Plus old-school bingo. You Are Not a Diagnosis is out now from Penguin Life. Get in touch at [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's Midweek Catchup, Lildl has stopped selling full-fat cottage cheese, and Karen, who eats it daily for her bones, is touring the supermarkets for the perfect lumpy, not watery, pot. Kaye finally ditches her grim old water bottle and nearly vomits at the £40 price of a new one. And there's chocolate orange mini rolls for Mrs Pre-diabetic, a family holiday to Malaga, a hedge boundary row, and your treasured heirlooms, from 1890 steps to a curling stone. On Friday we're joined by Professor Tanya Byron. Get in touch at [email protected] and follow Kaye on Instagram @kayeadamsofficial. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's episode, we're joined by Louise Doughty, who found a rusted black suitcase at the bottom of her late mum's wardrobe and nearly put it out with the bins. Inside were scores of undated letters charting the secret affair her parents had in 1950s Melton Mowbray, when her dad was a married man and her mum was his boss's secretary. Louise tells us how she pieced them together, why her parents took the story to their graves, and how losing them to Alzheimer's and a sudden heart attack almost hid who they really were. There's also a sister who kept fishing things back out of the bin liners. She was right, as it turns out. Louise also talks about what clearing out a family home teaches you about stuff, why 63 is her favourite decade so far, and admits she may have been the worst-dressed student of the early 80s. Her memoir, On This Spot Fell One Tear of Love, is out now. Whether you've cleared a parent's house or are dreading it, this one stays with you. Get in touch with your thoughts at [email protected]. Louise Doughty’s new book, On This Spot Fell One Tear of Love, is available now in hardback, ebook and audiobook. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's Midweek Catchup, Karen is up at the family home in a winged velour chair that Kaye swears belongs in a care home. She's been foraging for chanterelles, the only mushroom she can identify, and with nothing else to carry them in, she used a dog poo bag. Then she took it to the counter of the local gift shop. She's not going back. Kaye is wondering whether her mango habit is making her pre-diabetic, looks back on 37 years of friendship with Shereen Nanjiani after their Sunday on STV Radio, and has been sent a blackmail email about a porn addiction she definitely doesn't have. Plus Karen's big toe has grown, and a breast surgeon tries his best to read her knee MRI. Your emails now have a new home in the midweek, starting with Jennifer from Corfu, her husband and a mosquito spray that went where no mosquito spray should go. On Friday we're joined by Louise Doughty, author of Apple Tree Yard, talking about her first non-fiction book, a memoir built on letters her parents wrote to each other. Get in touch with your thoughts at [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's episode, we're joined by Julia Macklin, who was 15 in 1983 when her baby daughter was taken from her for adoption. Not 1953. 1983. Julia grew up in a devout Catholic family in Manchester and was told, again and again, that letting her baby go was the kindest thing she could do. She talks about the short letters from the Catholic Rescue Society describing another family bonding with her daughter, the grief she was never allowed to have, and the day, 18 years later, when a nun opened a door and said, she's here. Julia is one of the women in Stolen Babies, the BBC documentary now on iPlayer, and it's the first time she has spoken publicly about what happened. She turns 60 this year and says she has finally found her voice, along with a new talent for being stroppy in shops. Get in touch with your thoughts at [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's Midweek Catchup, we find out what Kaye does when a friend is pouring her heart out, barefoot, and the dog has left something under the chair. The short answer is nothing. We also compare first flats. Karen bought hers in Edinburgh for £12,000, sold it for £19,000, and was sure nobody would ever pay more. Kaye's two-up two-down in Birmingham cost £27,500 in 1986 and set her up for life. There's five minutes of staring at Sting across the Loose Women couch, and a curry squash Karen is slightly frightened of. Kaye is back on the radio this Sunday, co-presenting STV Radio from 9 till 12 with her old Scottish Television friend Shireen Nanjiani. And on Friday we're joined by Julia Macklin, whose story featured in the BBC documentary Stolen Babies. Her baby was taken from her in 1983, and she turns 60 this year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's episode, we're joined by Francesca Hicks, who saw an easyJet recruitment story on the morning news at 62 and had applied by the time she got home. She'd been sending CVs out for months and getting nowhere. Employers looked at the date of birth, she says, and assumed a grey rinse. Then came the taster day, the five o'clock starts, six exams, slide training and swimming training, and a set of wings her youngest son still tells her he's proud of. Now she can meet 500 new people in a day, has had a passenger of 100 on board, and is planning to keep flying until she's 70 at least. Because she wants to, not because she has to. EasyJet has just reopened its Returnships recruitment for over-50s, with applications from September, so if Francesca's story has you wondering, now is the moment to look. Get in touch with your thoughts at [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's Midweek Catchup, we lose a hearing aid at a flat viewing in Edinburgh, get glared at by our own daughter for whistling, and lock ourselves out of the house, all in the one week. Karen, meanwhile, has had a cooking apple rolling about her van for a month and can't find it. Between us there's one hearing aid, sixty remote controls and no idea how to get Colin from Accounts onto the actual television. Then a ferry to Rothesay turns into a sweaty eight-mile crawl behind someone doing 20, with a broken parking meter at the end and a dog who eats at half five on the dot. Stephen has retired and is already using it to justify a second chocolate digestive. Karen has brought a jar of cucumber pickle that looks like frog spawn. And there's a date in the diary for Janet Street-Porter in Glasgow next Tuesday. This week's guest episode is Francesca Hicks, who trained as easyJet cabin crew at 62. Get in touch with your thoughts at [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week's episode, we're joined by Keith Brymer Jones, who is marrying his partner Marge next year and having the wedding rings made out of clay. He's also planning the whole wedding himself. Marge knows nothing and has said she'll just walk in. Keith is the Great Pottery Throwdown judge known for crying over pots, although he says sad news rarely sets him off. He tells us about the art room that was his refuge from school bullies, the careers teacher who had him down for the gas board, and the day his mother died, a story he tells with the dark humour grief sometimes leaves behind. At 61 he says he's noticed his physical limits for the first time. He bought a Welsh chapel anyway. His new book, Firing Earth, is out in October, and you can see the chapel renovation in Our Welsh Chapel Dream on Channel 4. Get in touch with your thoughts at [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.