Kaye Adams on ambition, insecurity and surviving Strictly

My guest today is the journalist and broadcaster Kaye Adams. Kaye is the host of BBC Radio Scotland’s morning show and a longstanding panellist on ITV’s Loose Women, amongst other things. But if you’re a fellow Strictly addict, you maybe more likely to know her from her sadly brief but memorable stint in the current series where she partnered Kai… more of that later.

A journalist by training, Kaye is also the co-author of Still hot: 42 brilliantly honest menopause stories in which she and a host of women share their very different menopause experiences; and the co-host of the podcast, How To be 60 which she started because she found the prospect of turning 60, well, terrifying.

Kaye joined me from her home in Glasgow to talk being an age-denier, coming out as menopausal and the time she lost her ability to feel joy (but didn’t realise that was a symptom of peri menopause). We also discussed making peace with ambition, being a confident person with a shedload of insecurities and how Strictly taught her she never wants to subject herself to reality TV judgement again. She also opened up about her parents death and the hearing loss that makes her feel old. 

* You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Still Hot by Kaye Adams and Vicky Allan and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

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• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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