Explorez tous les épisodes du 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.

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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 podcast@htb60.com.

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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 podcast@htb60.com.

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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 podcast@htb60.com.

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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 podcast@htb60.com.

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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 podcast@htb60.com.

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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 podcast@htb60.com and follow Kaye on Instagram @kayeadamsofficial.

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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 podcast@htb60.com.

Louise Doughty’s new book, On This Spot Fell One Tear of Love, is available now in hardback, ebook and audiobook.

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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 podcast@htb60.com.

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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 podcast@htb60.com.

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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.

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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 podcast@htb60.com.

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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 podcast@htb60.com.

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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 podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week's Midweek Catchup, we find out what "aura farming" means, after four days in Spain with a crowd of twenty-year-olds who don't wash dishes. At all. Karen, meanwhile, is nursing another stinker of a cold, came home from Sunday with three kilos of brambles, and has turned them into a jam nobody asked her to describe. There's a reformer Pilates class where one of us looks like an insect flipped on its back, and a small row about whether Karen has ever made orange curd.

We also open a new front in the household debates. After the pre-loved gusset and the pillow protector, it's the hot tap versus the kettle. Kaye is team hot tap. Karen is not convinced. Tell us which side you're on. And on Friday we're joined by Keith Brymer Jones from The Great Pottery Throwdown, who is, by our own admission, a lot more interesting than we are.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week's episode, we're joined by Janet Street-Porter, who turns 80 in December, owns four wedding rings with no plans for a fifth, and once sat Daniel Craig at the end of a village hall table for her 60th birthday party. The self-described nation's favourite pissed off pensioner talks to Kaye and Karen about a childhood spent writing herself a parallel world, a Fleet Street career built on strategy rather than charm, five marriages, one biological age test that came back at 56, and why she'll tell a stranger on a train to keep his voice down. Women come to her shows and tell her she's saying the things they've never been able to say. Her answer is the mantra of the show itself: don't let anyone put you on a leash.

Janet's one-woman tour, Still Off the Leash at 80, runs across the UK from 14 September 2026 to April 2027.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

Tickets for Janet's tour: https://www.janetstreetporter.com/tour

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On this week's Midweek Catchup, Karen tries to leave a 10% tip and accidentally leaves 10 pence, a moment of card machine confusion she may never recover from. We also hear why she picks her brambles in a cemetery (great soil, no relatives required), the blood sugar results she's hiding from Steven, and why Kaye is considering wearing a security tabard to the National Television Awards, since nobody shouts her name on the red carpet anyway.

Plus a carpet cleaner that beat a £3,000 cleaning quote, and two cringe stories so bad neither of us will tell them yet. They're booked in for the 30th of September, so hold us to it. This week's guest episode is Janet Street-Porter, out Friday.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week's episode, we're joined by Jay Rayner, who turns 60 ten days after this goes out and will spend the day itself on stage in York. Before that, he answers the question he sets himself in his new book: am I a total bastard? The restaurant critic, now cook, talks about growing up as Claire Rayner's son, opening some of her thousand letters a week as a pocket money job, a family that did its talking loudly over a full table, and why, sixteen years after her death, the nepotism jibe still rankles. There's also a porcelain hip, a jazz sextet, and a marriage he describes as one unending conversation.

His new book and tour share a name, Nights Out in the Kitchen. The book is out now and the tour runs through the autumn, including a matinee at the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh in late September.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week’s Midweek Catchup, we compare ailments. Kaye has diagnosed herself with dead butt syndrome, which explains the hips, the 18-year-old mattress and the trip to the chiropractor. Her treatment plan involves a tulip-shaped device she once bought Karen for the Fringe. External use only. Karen is on day seven of warm water and lemon and has been invited for a jab whose leaflet opens with the over-75s. Also this week: the £3,000 cleaning quote, Ian up the scaffolding, and Karen’s first Christmas present of the year, bought in August. This week’s guest is Jay Rayner.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week's episode, we're joined by AC Scott, better known to Scottish audiences as broadcaster Alison Craig, who vanished from our screens in 2012 after a rare lung condition collapsed both her lungs and a consultant told her she had ten years to live. What happened next is the strange part. A songwriting weekend on the west coast of Scotland, a phone call from an Emmy-winning American producer telling her she was a songwriter, and the A&R veteran who discovered Jeff Buckley and signed Moby and Beth Orton taking her on. Alison talks about the breakdown she couldn't name at the time, the specialist in Nottingham who gave her back a future, and why the songs on her debut album are written from exactly where she is now, as a wife, a mother, a granny and, in her words, quite often a pissed-off individual.

Her album Out of the Blue is out now, with a launch in Edinburgh in September and a live date in London at the end of September. And because she can't fly, she took a boat to America and drove coast to coast just to say thank you to the man who made that call.

Alison's album Out of the Blue and all her music at https://acscott.co.uk, follow her on Instagram at @acscottsings, or listen on your platform of choice at https://linktr.ee/acscottsings.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week's Midweek Catchup, we find out why Kaye's head is glued back on. After more than a year of putting it off, she's had half her thyroid removed, and when the hospital rang five days later with the results, she let it ring out. Twice. Karen, meanwhile, has talked her way out of a prescription for antidepressants and into a pharmacist's alternative plan, and is dispatching garden slugs with the cheapest lager Lidl sells.

Also on the agenda: a worldwide mango shortage that may only exist in Kaye's kitchen, a squash the size of a small football that Karen is too frightened to cut into, and some very promising noises about a live tour. This Friday we're joined by AC Scott, releasing her first album in her sixties.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week's episode, we're joined by bestselling author Milly Johnson, who planned a year-long celebration of turning 60 and credits an arthritic knee with saving her life. Before the Yorkshire Pudding Club and three million book sales, there were decades of proper jobs, years of rejection, and a marriage so bad she filed for divorce while five months pregnant. Milly spent thirty years looking after everyone else — first her boys, then her parents — and decided this decade would be hers. Venice by train, northern soul dancing, and a diamond ring her partner didn't know he was buying yet.

Karen's off poorly this week, so Kaye goes solo and gets the lot: the millennium fireworks that marked the start of Milly's freedom, the agent who said yes when she'd written five words, and the line from her dad's love letter now tattooed on her arm — I don't feel like being sensible anymore. Milly's 23rd novel, Let the Bells Ring Out, is out in October.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week's Midweek Catchup, we come back down to earth after the Fringe — to a filthy house, a poorly husband and the guilty remains of a packet of chocolate-covered pecans. Kaye's been in London doing ITV, where she talked a very nice photographer into taking her passport photo while she still had her telly makeup on. That's her sorted until she's 72. Karen, meanwhile, has been collecting firewood. In August.

Mostly though, this one belongs to the emails from people who came to the Edinburgh shows. There's one that nearly finishes Karen off, and a sorry tale from Katie, whose train from Aberdeen stopped after ten minutes and sat there for four and a half hours — she never made it to the show at all. If we ever do a tour, Aberdeen, we're coming to you. And there is talk of a tour. We're saying nothing else for now.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week's episode, we're joined by Jan Birley, who decided at 58 that she was going to produce a feature film, and had one finished by 60.

She'd spent thirty years as an IT project manager, and by her own count she has been in the film industry for two. She raised a budget of around £800,000, put her own money in, and when an experienced line producer told her she wasn't ready, she told him she'd crew it up herself and do it. He came back a couple of days later and said he was in. The film is Hot Flash, shot in Yorkshire, with Gaynor Faye as a woman starting again in her forties with no money and a business idea nobody has asked for. Jan also tells us about the fear of heights that turned into a climbing habit, the triathlons she signed up for before she could swim, and the mentor who told her years ago to put "writer" in her email signature. She never did. She does now.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week's Midweek Catchup, we're coming to you from the dungeon of Teviot House, an hour before our final Fringe show, because Karen wants to catch the free bus home. Three sell-out shows, nerves that leave the coffee sitting somewhere between chest and throat, and a suspiciously big round of applause for Karen that Kaye is trying not to take personally. Plus a dash to the laundrette with the sheets from Bonnie's student flat, a surprise family delegation in the audience, and a boiler that gave up the moment Karen left the house.

A huge thank you to everyone who came along to the shows, and to all of you who listen every week. It means more than you know. On Friday we're joined by Jan Birley, who wrote and produced her first ever feature film at 60 — Hot Flash, starring Gaynor Faye, in cinemas this autumn.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Barbara Scully, who did her first stand-up gig at 60, mostly because two women wouldn’t let her out of their flat until she agreed. Now she’s about to tour her second one-woman show. She tells us about hitting rock bottom at 50 in the dole office car park, being mistaken for the children’s chaperone minutes before her own show, and why she has no interest in getting her oestrogen back. As for menopausal brain fog, she’s renamed it an information retrieval slowdown, and her husband has it just as badly. Because no one tells you that being underestimated might be the best thing you’ve got going for you.

Barbara’s new show, Because I’m Worth It, tours Ireland from 27 August, with all dates and tickets at barbarascully.com. Her book, Wise Up, is out now.

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On this week's Midweek Catchup, one of us has news. Proper news. You'll have to listen. What we can say: Kaye's been to Manchester for her roots, finally claimed her third off the train fare, and rode an electric bike home through Glasgow like a witch on a broomstick.

Then there's the passport photo. Rejected. Eyes shut, said the computer. They were open. That's hooded eyes for you. All this two days before our first Fringe show, with Friday and Saturday sold out and a few Sunday tickets going. Barbara Scully, the Irish Joan Rivers, joins us on Friday's episode.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week's episode, we're joined by Marisa Peer, who was once asked to do therapy in a jacuzzi in a bikini. She said no, and says it probably cost her work. Marisa is a therapist and bestselling author who started out as a fitness trainer at Jane Fonda's fitness centre in LA, got married for the first time at 51, and reckons she did the whole thing the wrong way round. She tells Kaye and Karen about the male friend she handed a television job to, who went straight to the network and suggested they drop her for someone younger. About the three ages we all have, only one of which is on your birth certificate. And about the small daily trick she uses to stop her brain settling, which starts with the hand you hold your toothbrush in.

At 67 she is the happiest she has ever been, and still moving countries every few years — London to America to Dubai, and possibly Portugal next. Marisa's seventh book, Your Mind, Your Rules, is out now.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

Marisa's Book: https://smarturl.it/u3hAnQ

Marisa's Podcast: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWcHna_Pla5dhel7QP31t1desz_eT3qqx&si=TGXSZY3r6F_qBmLp

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On this week's Midweek Catchup, we find out what one load of washing costs at the laundrette when your house is in bits. Thirty-six pounds. Kaye has no kitchen, no washing machine, and a dishwashing arrangement involving a baby bath, so she's on an economy drive: not buying food, not washing anything. Then there's the railcard she resisted for years, right up until it saved her forty quid to Manchester. That's a wash, as she points out. Karen has Stephen, a quarter of toffees, and eight wrappers, one under the bed. Kaye marks eight years since her mum died with yellow roses at the cemetery.

We're at the Edinburgh Fringe on the 7th, 8th and 9th of August, nearly sold out. On Friday's podcast, Marissa Peer joins us. She's 67, eight books in, and says she's the happiest she's been in her life.

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On this week's episode, we're joined by Mimi Anderson, who set off into the Canadian Arctic on a fat bike in minus 35 and turned back with frostbite. She didn't start running until she was 36, and only then because somebody told her it would make her legs thinner. It went from there to the Sahara and a world record between Land's End and John o'Groats.

She tells us about the day a consultant showed her the hole in her knee, forty days into a run from Los Angeles to New York and on track to break the record. It took her over an hour to decide to stop. Her second book is called Limitless. She isn't pretending the body doesn't change, she just keeps finding something else to do with it.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week's Midweek Catchup, Kaye gets home from holiday to no power, no kitchen, no running water, and a chest freezer of the dog's raw meat that had been switched off for ten days. Six inches of blood at the bottom. She's calling it the abattoir. Karen, meanwhile, has spent the fortnight losing to a squash plant that's trying to take over the garden, washing up in a baby bath, and keeping an eye on her husband's brand-new pre-diabetic diet — which is going about as well as you'd expect when there's homemade ice cream in the freezer and half of it's already gone.

They're also both Fringe-bound. How To Be 60 is on stage on the 7th, 8th and 9th of August, 2:45pm, at the Gilded Balloon at the Museum, and the tickets are going fast — 83% gone at the last count. Kaye reckons they ought to rehearse. Karen would like to know what exactly there is to rehearse about two people talking to each other. Tickets: https://tickets.gildedballoon.co.uk/event/14:7161/

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On this week's episode, we're joined by Russ Kane, who spent 20 years reporting traffic from a light aircraft and now conducts funerals for a living. He was Chris Tarrant's wingman on Capital Radio Breakfast, the flying eye on a show pulling four million listeners a week. He walked away from it after his wife Sally died at 43, leaving him with five-year-old twin boys. He'd already lost his dad. His mum's dementia came next, and lasted years longer than any doctor told him to expect. Russ talks about grieving privately while raising two small kids in public, why he stopped looking for a reason, and the thing he says people get wrong when they ask why me. There's also a raw chicken in a chest of drawers, which will make sense when you hear it.

He's a novelist and he hosts the weekly podcast Walk the Talk: The Hero's Journey. He also declined, firmly, to tell us his date of birth. Then right at the end he mentions being sent to boarding school at nine, and the rest of the conversation rearranges itself.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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Kaye joins Karen from Puglia for a very relaxed midweek catch-up involving questionable Italian, a holiday glass-door incident, and Ian’s mysterious new lease of life.

There’s talk of pasta-making fatigue, pillow protectors, Karen’s ongoing domestic standards, and whether Ian’s new phone screensaver, Vespa adventure and tennis match with “the man from Monaco” point to a full-blown midlife crisis.

Plus, Kaye and Karen give a quick Edinburgh Fringe update ahead of their live shows on 7, 8 and 9 August with special guest Siobhan Daniels, the Retirement Rebel.

Get tickets here: https://tickets.gildedballoon.co.uk/event/14:7161/

And on Friday, Russ Kane joins them for a moving and honest conversation about loss, love and his life now as a celebrant.

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On this week's episode, we're joined by Sky Sports legend Jacquie Beltrao, who was told seven years ago that her breast cancer had returned and spread. Her scans are clear now, but as she says, she doesn't know what the future holds, only that she has today. Jacquie talks candidly about the doom spiral of a stage four diagnosis, the antidepressants that pulled her out of it, and why she thinks her mind has been harder to conquer than her body. She also opens up about turning 60 as a cancer patient, why getting older feels like something to celebrate rather than dread, and the anxiety dream about a gymnastics routine that still wakes her up in a sweat.

Whether you're facing your own health scare or just trying to make sense of getting older, this is a conversation about what changes when uncertainty becomes something you live with rather than something you fear. And if you're around in August, come and see Kaye and Karen live at the Edinburgh Fringe, 7-9 August at the Gilded Balloon at the Museum. Tickets at https://tickets.gildedballoon.co.uk/event/14:7161/.

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On this week's Midweek Catchup, we get Kaye's verdict live from the Amalfi Coast: stunningly beautiful, wildly overpriced, and Positano is basically Disneyland with a coastline. She's also two days into a self-imposed digital detox, phone banished to the bedside drawer, after Bonnie stopped her mid-scroll in the pool and asked if they could just take a moment to appreciate where they are. The child has a point.

Karen, meanwhile, is not detoxing from anything. She's deep in a Vinted spiral, six pillow protectors down (new with tags, she'd like that noted), and fresh from a hygienist appointment she remembered eight minutes before it started, followed by an airflow clean she describes as a pressure washer to the face. Come and see us live at the Edinburgh Fringe, 7th to 9th August, 2:45pm at Gilded Balloon at the Museum. Tickets via the Gilded Balloon or the Edinburgh Festival Fringe website.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week's episode, we're joined by Bibi Lynch, who moved house 30 times in ten years, nineteen of them in a single stretch of 24 months, all while writing for the national press and turning up on live radio as if nothing were wrong. Bibi was hidden homeless for a decade after losing the flat she'd bought on her own, and she was carrying it alongside the death of her dad, the collapse of what freelance journalism paid, and the slow realisation that she wasn't going to have the children she'd always assumed would arrive. She calls that last one social infertility, and she is still angry about it, in the most articulate way you'll hear.

Bibi turned 60 three months ago, and rather than the end of things, she's found it buoyant, her word, not ours. She talks to Kaye and Karen about looking back at two brutal decades with something closer to compassion than regret, why she reckons the worst has already happened so there's not much left to fear, and the book, the screenplay and the frankly excellent name story she's taking into the next chapter. If you've ever measured your life by what you didn't get rather than what you did, this one stays with you. We're also live at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe on the 7th, 8th and 9th of August, 2.45 at the museum, with Retirement Rebel Siobhan Daniels. Tickets are at the Gilded Balloon.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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Kaye's had a nightmare. Cancelled flight, a 6.20am rescue seat, and a live telly show to present on no sleep, softened by a lunchtime pisco sour and a nap she snorted herself awake from.

This week: Ian gets diagnosed by Dr Kaye and ChatGPT, then refuses the sedative for his endoscopy to save himself a phone call. Karen hunts for the perfect white tablecloth and earns a new nickname. And after a friend books Puglia entirely on the strength of Karen's holiday photos, a star is born.

Plus: Charly turns 24, and a preview of Friday's guest, the spectacularly upbeat Bibi Lynch.

Catch How to Be 60 at the Edinburgh Fringe, 7th–9th August, 2.45pm at the Museum. Tickets via the Gilded Balloon or the official Fringe website.

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How much time is left on your warranty? Cindy Sheahan, 64, left a 32-year marriage, packed a backpack, and turned a two-week hike into a whole new life in Sicily. She tells Kaye and Karen about travelling solo after 60, why her son cheered her out the door, and making friends with uncertainty.

Plus we're bringing How To Be 60 to the Edinburgh Fringe this August, with retirement rebel Siobhan Daniels joining us fresh from her camper van trek to Alaska. Tickets on sale now at the Gilded Balloon. Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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Karen's back from her "sex retreat" in rural Italy (the most relaxing time, she swears, two trips to the beach and not a thing else), and she's convinced her feet have put on weight. Kaye's hosting an awards do in a jumpsuit so sheer it'll need industrial-strength knickers, which leads, naturally, to a deep dive on thongs versus hearing aids. There's the photo of Karen's backside disappearing through a first-floor window over a blocked water butt, Bonnie discovering cup-a-soup like it's a brand-new invention, and the great moral question of the week: your ice cream falls on the pavement, lands perfectly, only the underside touched down. Do you put it back on the cone?

How To Be 60 is at the Edinburgh Fringe, 7-9 August, Gilded Balloon at the Museum: https://tickets.gildedballoon.co.uk/event/14:7161/

And this Friday, meet Cindy Sheehan, who walked out of her marriage in her late fifties and has been travelling the world ever since.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week's episode, we're joined by Donna Lancaster — therapist, author, co-founder of The Bridge Retreat, and a self-described "elder in training" who turns 60 next March and genuinely cannot wait.

Donna grew up with violence, addiction and racism in 1970s Britain, became a social worker trying to save versions of herself, and was eventually "brought to her knees" by a breakdown at work. She talks about why she sees that collapse as a gift, the "turd-wrapped gift" buried inside our hardest experiences, and why getting older doesn't make you wiser unless you do the work.

There's also the line that stopped Kaye and Karen in their tracks — it's not an old face, it's a new one — plus elderhood as a purpose, why she runs a workshop called Preparing for Death, and what she's planning in the forest for her 60th.

How To Be 60 is at the Edinburgh Fringe, 7–9 August, Gilded Balloon at the Museum:

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com. 

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Karen's calling in from sunny Puglia, and after last week's second-hand pyjamas confession, the internet has voted: for once, it's Team Kaye. What follows is a spirited defence of "vintage" nightwear, the wearing of pants underneath it, and whether any of it is, frankly, minging.

Plus crepey skin, why loud bars now feel like punishment, un-labelled moving boxes, and a lovely summer read: Fresh Water for Flowers by Valérie Perrin. Look ahead to Friday's guest, Donna Lancaster, and catch Kaye and Karen live at the Fringe, 7th–9th August.

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For her 70th birthday, Gail Rice booked a male escort. It was a toss-up between that and a skydive, and she went with the one that scared her more. But it was never really about sex. The Canadian-born psychologist tells Kaye and Karen why she needed what she calls a battery jump, the first encounter that was a disaster, the refund she asked for and got, and the thing that was actually brave, which had nothing to do with the escort. She has since turned it all into writing and a cabaret that terrifies her.

See Kaye and Karen live at the Edinburgh Fringe, 7th to 9th August, 2:45pm at the Museum. Tickets via the Gilded Balloon or the official Edinburgh Festival Fringe website.

Get in touch at podcast@htb60.com

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Bestselling novelist Jane Green had it all. E18 New York Times bestsellers, over 10 million books in print, the beautiful homes, the blended family, the loving husband. And then, piece by piece, she lost most of it: the marriage, the financial security, the career status, and for a while, herself.

This week Kaye and Karen sit down with one of the original queens of chick lit for a remarkably honest conversation about menopause, the empty nest, a crumbling marriage, the shame we lock away for decades, and what it takes to find your way back. As Jane puts it: you spend so much of your life wanting to be chosen by the right people, and then you reach a point where you no longer need to be chosen and realise you're allowed to choose. It's a glorious thing.

Jane's memoir, Rewilding, is out now. Part memoir, part battle cry for any woman who's ever felt invisible in her own story, it's all about rediscovering the fearless, brave little girl you once were.

🎭 See Kaye and Karen live at the Edinburgh Fringe — 7th, 8th and 9th August. Grab your tickets here:https://tickets.gildedballoon.co.uk/event/14:7161/

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On this week's episode, Pauline Campbell got in touch herself and said she'd be a good guest. She was right. Told at 15 by a teacher she wasn't capable, Pauline believed it for years. Until she didn't. In her mid-30s she started driving between a council job and a full-time law degree, qualified as a solicitor, and hasn't stopped since. Now 61, she's a legal hero, a pro bono Windrush advocate, a published author, and the owner of an accent she refused to lose even when a judge pointed it out in court.

Pauline talks about silent strength, the parents who held back so their children could fly, why shedding your skin to fit in makes you less not more, and the erotic novel she wrote after a suave barrister told her it was always a pleasure, never a chore. Plus Karen forgets the email address. Again.

Pauline's book Lefty Lawyer: Speaking Truth to Power is out now from Waterside Press. Her memoir Rice & Peas and Fish & Chips is also available. Find out more at paulineecampbell.com.

How To Be 60 is at the Edinburgh Fringe, 7-9 August, Gilded Balloon at the Museum: https://tickets.gildedballoon.co.uk/event/14:7161/

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week's Midweek Catchup, Karen turns up in cut-off trousers she hacked herself and sandals that have been in the garden all week. She gets her nails done and the woman has to scrape the muck out on a bit of kitchen roll. Kaye's been to a glamorous event in London surrounded by 26-year-olds and her hearing aid starts whistling. She doesn't say a word. They check the air conditioning. Plus doggy goggles that don't work, the Joy of Sex drawings that put everyone off, and Kaye's knee falling out at 3K in trainers from the last century.

How To Be 60 is at the Edinburgh Fringe, 7-9 August, Gilded Balloon at the Museum: https://tickets.gildedballoon.co.uk/event/14:7161/

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week's episode, we're joined by Sian Reeves — actor and host of the Who Cares? podcast.

Sian talks about caring for her poorly dad, what it costs (£4-7k a month), and the Loose Women appearance years ago she didn't make because she'd been conned out of eight grand by a hairdresser and was too ashamed to come on and say it. Plus the acid yellow mini dress she bought in France that she's still not sure she'll wear.

Sian's Who Cares? podcast is wherever you listen.

How To Be 60 is at the Edinburgh Fringe, 7-9 August, Gilded Balloon at the Museum: https://tickets.gildedballoon.co.uk/event/14:7161/

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.

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On this week's Midweek Catchup, Kaye Adams and Karen MacKenzie mark the death of Scott Hastings at 61, six months after he joined How To Be 60 to talk about losing his wife Jenny. Karen also opens up about starting counselling, and why "how are you?" is a question people only ask when they want the easy answer. Plus a David Tennant selfie, the great kitchen debate, and a teddy bear made from a mink coat.

Whether you're processing something big yourself, or just tired of saying you're fine when you're not, this one is for you.

Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com and book tckets for the Fringe show on the 7/8/9 August at https://tickets.gildedballoon.co.uk/event/14:7161/

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