How To Be 60 with Kaye Adams

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.