Loose Women star Kaye Adams became the first contestant to leave Strictly Come Dancing, when she took part in the show two years ago.

After finding herself in the dreaded dance-off, Loose Women star Kaye Adams became the first contestant to leave Strictly Come Dancing, when she took part in the show two years ago.

But while she has no regrets about her experience, the presenter admits that it has put her off signing up for any similar shows in the future.

“I just don’t know if I’m desperate to be judged again in that way,” Kaye reflects. “You could go in the jungle, you could try your level best, do everything, but you’re voted out first for whatever reason and you just feel like a loser. I don’t think I need that in my life.”

Kaye entered Strictly in 2022, dancing with Kai Widdrington. The BBC1 show has come under fire recently with allegations of bullying and complaints of abusive behaviour. But while Kaye acknowledges she found her Strictly experience bruising, she blames her own naivety, not the show and certainly not dance partner Kai.

Kaye Adams admitted she has been put off from signing up to similar shows in the future ( 
Image:
PA)

“Kai was an absolute gentleman from start to finish. I was so pleased to be paired with him and I couldn’t have asked any more of him,” she says firmly.

“I met some wonderful people on Strictly. That was the joy of it. But it is a tough show, which is very difficult for viewers to understand, because of course it just looks like the most enormous fun and sparkles and glitter.

“It is all of that, but emotionally you do have to put yourself on the line. That’s nobody’s fault, but that’s what it requires. Some people sail through that and respond to it in the most positive way and for other people it can be a bit destabilising. I found it a bit destabilising. But that’s me, that’s not the show or the way I was treated.”

Kaye, who danced a Tango and a Charleston, said at the time that she hoped Strictly would turn her into the sort of person who would jump up to dance at a wedding. But she confesses that hasn’t happened.

“I haven’t undergone some amazing transformation – I’m still the same old klutz that I was ten, twenty or thirty years ago,” she laughs. “I guess what was just accentuated for me on Strictly was that I am a bit uptight about dancing in public.

“In retrospect, it was probably naïve to think that you would go on a television show, where you are exposed to a massive audience, and suddenly you would turn into a different personality. That was a ridiculous idea and so it proved to be, but I’m not in therapy, it’s all good!”

Yet while Kaye won’t be lining up to take part in I’m a Celebrity, there is one show she would still love to try. “Celebrity Race Across the World is great,” she enthuses. “With that show there isn’t a vote – you either are or you aren’t the loser, so I’d love to do that.

“Especially if I could do it with one of my kids, because I think I’d win. Well, they would win and I would just go along for the ride!”

Kaye, 61, lives in Glasgow with her tennis coach partner Ian and the couple have two daughters, Charly, 22 and Bonnie, 17. She hosts a daily show on BBC Radio Scotland, and has her own successful podcast How to be 60, but is best known as one of the main presenters on the ITV lunchtime chat show Loose Women.

The show marks its 25th anniversary next month and Kaye has been with it from the start having anchored the very first show in 1999. She was 36 at the time and having been told the job would just be for a month admits she could never have imagined it lasting so long.

“God no,” she exclaims. It was a very untested format – so, it’s four women. Right ok, what do we do? Well, you just sit and talk for an hour. We were thinking: ‘really? well, what do we talk about?’

“It just felt very woolly, so I certainly wasn’t putting any great store by it and we had absolutely no notion of how it would go down with the audience – we were completely aware that it might just divebomb.”

Kaye Adams became the first contestant to leave the show ( 
Image:
PA)

Kaye Adams said she felt ‘judged’ on the show ( 
Image:
Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
Over the years, the show has won countless awards and received a much respected BAFTA nomination earlier this year. Much has been made of backstage rows between the presenters, but Kaye insists that incidents have been greatly exaggerated. “Whether somebody works in an office or a factory and there’s a bunch of work colleagues, you will see a very similar relationship dynamic as the one that exists at Loose Women,” she explains.

“There are the ones that you click with, that you’re desperate to go for coffee with and there are the ones that you smile at and you think are nice, but you’re not that close. There’s absolutely no difference.

“Loose Women has been an enormously positive influence on my life and I’ve made some great friendships – Nadia (Sawalha) and Jane (Moore) are both good friends, who I see outside of the show.”

The panellists are known for speaking their minds and occasionally regretting what they say and while Kaye is usually careful with her words, she confesses she did cause upset in one of her early shows.

“I found the early days of motherhood really quite difficult and I obviously shared that on the programme,” she recalls.

“These things tend to get picked up and then exist on the internet forever, so when Charly was younger, she must have discovered them and she said: ‘did you really hate motherhood?’

Kaye Adams received support from her fellow Loose Women presenters ( 
Image:
BBC)“I felt awful. We discussed it and I explained that wasn’t the case, but it was a little bit of a reminder that you have to be careful.”

Away from Loose Women Kaye’s passion is her How to be 60 podcast, which has seen her interview a host of big-name stars about their thoughts on turning 60.

“It’s a handmade, low-budget production, recorded in this little attic in my house, but it’s very personal to me,” she smiles.

“Society talks a lot now about midlife and menopause and I think that is fantastic, but I think once you become post-menopausal and into your late 50s, you go into the wilderness a little bit in terms of the public conversation.

“There are a lot of people, both men and women, who actually are getting to that stage of life and thinking they’ve got an awful lot of living to do. They want to get reward and value out of these years and not just drift into the horizon and I’m really happy to be part of that conversation.”

As for her own future, Kaye is unsure how retirement will feature in her plans. “If my life isn’t as busy, I wonder if it will all feel a bit aimless,” she says candidly.

“I’m not at that stage at the moment, but I can see that might come, so I am already planning what to do, what activities I might take up and what new friends I might make, whether they like it or not!

“My partner Ian lives and breathes tennis and he would live in Spain at least for the winter. It would be a huge thing and I am kind of set in my ways, but it’s starting to make me think – could we do that, should we do that?

“Possibilities come up and you either just keep your head down and plough on, or you say: ‘this is an opportunity to do things that I’ve never done before and switch things up a little bit.’”

As for work, Kaye insists she is not as ambitious as she was when she first bounded on to the Loose Women stage 25 years ago. “I’m not as competitive as I was. People laugh when I say this, but I have mellowed!” she smiles.

“It’s not that I’ve completely given up the ghost. But having worked in television for as long as I have, I have come to realise that the most talented, successful and popular people in the world of entertainment aren’t necessarily the people that I would want to spend an evening with. Over time it’s sunk in that being the top of the tree in this very artificial world, doesn’t actually mean that much.”

Kaye Adams: How to be 60 is available on all podcast providers