Kaye Adams — things you didn’t know about the TV star

Kaye Adams is an experienced journalist and broadcaster best-known for her role on the ITV daytime talk show Loose Women. She's also been a regular reporter on This Morning and The One Show and hosts a morning radio show on BBC Radio Scotland.

Over the course of her varied career she's also appeared on many panel and quiz shows and has taken part in Celebrity MasterChef, The Celebrity Circle and even a celebrity version of the obstacle course-based game show Total Wipeout (although she might prefer to forget about that!). 

The Scottish star is about to turn 60 later this year and she hopes embracing the glitz and glamour of Strictly Come Dancing 2022 will be just the tonic she needs to welcome in the new decade in sparkling style. 

Here’s everything you need to know about Kaye, from her career highs, her close-knit family, why she decided to say yes to Strictly and why she lied about her age for years…

Strictly has transformed her life

Kaye says Strictly Come Dancing has transformed her life. 

In a post on her Instagram account, she reveals how the public has already embraced her appearance on the hit Saturday night show and she’s been blown away by their good luck wishes and support. 

In the below post, she says: "I can unequivocally say I am so happy that I've agreed because it has reconnected me with real people. Like lots of journalists I live on Twitter and all the nastiness, the toxicity and people trying to take you down all the time and this has just transformed my life because I'm at the shop and out for a walk with the dog or just whatever, I'm in a restaurant, whatever and just nice ordinary people go, "good luck", "I hope it goes well", "aren't you brave." Just really nice, decent people, they are out there, this is so nice to be reminded of it."

She also admitted she wasn't sure about taking part in the dancing competition and had to think long and hard about accepting the daunting but exciting offer. Kaye has openly admitted she has two left feet and thought she was too old and it was too far outside her comfort zone to say yes. 

Kaye was the fourth celebrity to be announced, shocking her Loose Women co-stars by revealing the news live on the show.

Check out their hilarious reaction in Kaye's Instagram post below. 

Kaye has her own podcast about reaching a significant milestone…

It was the podcast that she never wanted to make, but after years of avoiding the issue, Kaye has finally embraced her real age and even launched a podcast all about it.

Called How to be 60 with Kaye Adams, each week she chats to her friend Karen MacKenzie and a host of famous faces, in the hope that talking about turning 60 will help her accept, embrace and maybe even enjoy it.

As well as her Loose Women co-star Jane Moore, Kaye has also chatted with Jonathan Ross, Nicky Campbell, Vanessa Feltz and Anthea Turner among many others about the realities of life once you've blown out 60 candles on your cake. 

Conversations include, if men age better than women? The menopause, making big life decisions later in life and is also packed full of positive advice and information for anyone else who has trouble reconciling the age they feel with the age they are.

Kaye even kept her age a secret from her daughter!

For years Kaye lied to absolutely everyone about her age, even her daughter. In an interview with the Mirror she admitted that she only fessed up to her eldest child, Charley, when was about 12 and Kaye had started to feel uncomfortable about lying. 

She told the paper: "I broke the truth to her in a coffee shop, which was a lot more traumatic than I thought it would be. I thought she’d think it was funny but she was genuinely disappointed in me. I’ll never forget her little face, I feel terrible, she was so shocked. She had it in her head I was the same age as her friends’ parents and suddenly I wasn’t and that rocked her.”

Kaye initially disliked her Loose Women co-star

Kaye loves her job on Loose Women and is best mates with many of her co-stars. 

Although when she first started on the daily chat show, in 1999, she took an instant dislike to one of her fellow presenters.

In an interview in the Mirror Kaye and Nadia Sawalha confessed they didn't start out as the best of friends, with Nadia saying: "When I got the job I said, 'What, every day with her!?' And then we ended up being the best of friends, and how wrong we would have been."

The pair ended up living together in Manchester while they both worked on the show and are now firmly the best of mates. 

Kaye has released three books

In 2021 Kaye Adams was the co-author of Still Hot! 42 Brilliantly Honest Menopause Stories. The book promoted more open conversation about the still-taboo subject, demonstrated that the menopause is different for everyone and that it's important for everyone to have a better understanding of how it could be affecting the women in their lives. 

In 2018, alongside her Loose Women co-star Kaye also released, Nadia & Kaye: Disaster Chef: Simple Recipes for Cooks Who Can't. 

The book was inspired by Kaye driving Nadia a bit mad with her terrible cooking. Nadia won Celebrity MasterChef in 2007 and is an accomplished cook, publishing five other cookery books. 

The pair compiled a collection of recipes that are straight-forward and easy enough for even the most reluctant chef. 

Also in 2018, Kaye and Nadia published Nadia & Kaye: Parent Alert! How to Keep Your Kids Safe Online. Alongside a security expert the mums of two daughters each, shared their knowledge and tips for helping young people navigate the often confusing and sometimes dangerous online world. 

Kaye Adams has interviewed the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

After graduating from Edinburgh University Kaye's first job was at Central Television, which is where she secured an interview with the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Although the interview didn't quite go as well as Kaye had planned… 

Chatting on the podcast Be Honest with Scottish comedians Bruce Devlin and Jojo Sutherland, she revealed how in an effort to impress her new boss she wrote to the Prime Minster, never thinking she would actually say yes.

But she did and Kaye went to Downing Street, was given a personal tour of the PM's residence and was totally overwhelmed by the Iron Lady, saying in the podcast: 

"It was a dreadful interview. I was just too young, too inexperienced. She completely dominated it."

But at least it did make it clear to Kaye that she didn't want to pursue a journalism career at Westminster, and also prepared her for an appearance on the ITV quiz show The Chase, where she was similarly overwhelmed by the master quizzers! 

Kaye really loves her beautiful dog Bea

A very important member of Kaye's house is her cockapoo Bea. Like many of us, her four-legged friend became even more important during the pandemic and Bea was a brilliant distraction through lockdown with Kaye sharing many cute picture of woman's best friend on her Instagram account. 

Kaye has admitted she's been diagnosed with hearing loss

In July of this year, Kaye revealed she has been diagnosed with hearing loss and advised to wear hearing aids in both ears. 

She told the Mirror: “You don’t go for a test without having your suspicions, so it didn’t come completely out of the blue. But I suppose what did come as a surprise was the advice to have two. In my head, I was reconciled to needing one, not two.”

Although the news came as a shock, Kaye is now ready to embrace the change.

“I’ve certainly had people on Instagram who have been through the same sort of thing and say they’ve had a very positive experience, that hearing aids have made a huge difference for them. I look forward to it.”

Kaye Adams' Fact File

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We work hard to ensure that all information is correct. Facts that change over time, such as age, will be correct, to the best of our knowledge, at the time of the last article update.