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 par

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

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

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 li

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

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 ac

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

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 f

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

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 nobo

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 i

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 th

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 produc

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 wi

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

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 fir

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 s

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

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

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 d