How To Be 60 with Kaye Adams

On this week’s Midweek Catchup, we work out how small a thing it takes to end a romance. For Karen, it was a man who thought her avocado was a lime. For Kaye, it was a tongue in the ear over a pub lunch, and a mum who came round every Tuesday to do his washing.
Karen is on her fourth cold in four months, and Kaye has been shopping for a spittoon. Kaye admits she has started doing the things that used to annoy her about her own mum. Ian hosts eight colleagues on two packets of crisps and four beers. And ahead of this week’s guest, Nina Wadia, who talks about friends with cancer who wanted her to make them laugh, Karen says what she wanted from people during her own treatment. Normality. Lulu is coming up in a couple of weeks.
Get in touch with your thoughts at podcast@htb60.com.
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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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