How To Be 60 with Kaye Adams

Epizody

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  Julia Macklin: The Day I Looked Into My Own Eyes 01.10.2026 55min

  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.
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  Midweek Catchup: The Friend, the Bare Feet and the Thing Under the Chair 29.09.2026 23min

  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.
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  Francesca Hicks: Cabin Crew at 62, After Every Other CV Got Binned 24.09.2026 38min

  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.
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  Midweek Catchup: Is There an Age You Move from Porn to Vinted? 22.09.2026 20min

  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.
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  Keith Brymer Jones: Clay, Tears and a Welsh Chapel 17.09.2026 48min

  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.
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  Midweek Catchup: What on Earth Is Aura Farming? 15.09.2026 24min

  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 [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Janet Street-Porter: 80, Off the Leash and Saying It For You 10.09.2026 49min

  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 [email protected] for Janet's tour: https://www.janetstreetporter.com/tour Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Midweek Catchup: The 10 Pence Tip That Still Haunts Karen 08.09.2026 17min

  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 [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Jay Rayner: Turning 60 With His Appetite Intact 03.09.2026 59min

  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 [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Midweek Catchup: Kaye Has Dead Butt Syndrome 01.09.2026 25min

  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 [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  AC Scott: The Broadcaster Who Disappeared and Came Back Singing 27.08.2026 44min

  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 [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Midweek Catchup: The Phone Call Kaye Wouldn't Pick Up 25.08.2026 24min

  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 [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Milly Johnson: The Arthritic Knee That Saved Her Life 20.08.2026 50min

  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 [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Midweek Catchup: Back to Earth with a Bump 18.08.2026 22min

  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 [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Jan Birley: From IT Project Manager to Producing Her Own Feature Film 13.08.2026 42min

  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 [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Midweek Catchup: Everybody Bloody Loves Karen 11.08.2026 13min

  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 [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Barbara Scully: Stand-Up at 60 and the Superpower of Being Underestimated 06.08.2026 46min

  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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Midweek Catchup: Big News and a Passport Computer That Says No 04.08.2026 23min

  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 [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Marisa Peer: Ageing Is a Decision 30.07.2026 44min

  Episode descriptionOn 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 [email protected]'s Book: https://smarturl.it/u3hAnQMarisa's Podcast: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWcHna_Pla5dhel7QP31t1desz_eT3qqx&si=TGXSZY3r6F_qBmLp Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Midweek Catchup: A £36 Wash and the Railcard I Swore I'd Never Get 28.07.2026 22min

  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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.