What on earth is all this nonsense – endless pitying column inches saying how many ‘poor’ women are having to go on working after the age of 65?
Women face toiling until they drop, we were warned this week, after a sudden surge in the number of those aged 65 and over in employment.
The number is one in ten – and I am one of them. I don’t expect to be pitied for it, I’m just relieved that the ageism so many of my old friends suffered no longer exists to the same degree.
At 74 – three quarters of a century, for goodness sake! – I’m still working. There’s this column and other journalism, including radio programmes.
And I love all of it.
At 74 – three quarters of a century, for goodness sake! – I’m still working, writes Jenni Murray (picture posed by model)
I have no fantasies about making my garden more beautiful (I hate gardening), looking after my grandchildren (I have none) or going cruising. Without work, my life would seem very empty.
The BBC, as recently as the early 2000s, insisted that retirement age meant retirement. Men were required to go at 65 and women at 60. My colleague Pat, one of the best, most well-connected radio producers I’ve ever known, was forced to walk away from the job she loved at 60.
She should have had many more years of brilliant creativity in her but had to retire. She died four years later. I think she lost the will to live because she no longer knew what to do with her life.
It turns out Pat was not alone. A study funded by the American National Institute on Ageing published in 2016 found retirement led to significant numbers facing an early death.
Luckily for me, the BBC changed its rule in 2006 in anticipation of women’s state pension age rising from 60 to 65. All of a sudden employees were no longer expected to retire the moment they hit 65. The decision coincided with the introduction of an EU directive ending ageism in the workplace.
I stayed on at the BBC until I was 70, leaving only because I became unhappy with the direction in which Woman’s Hour was going and the misery of walking into an empty Broadcasting House during the pandemic.
Of course, the money is a powerful attraction. I was one of the lucky ones who got her state pension at the age of 60. It’s now £1,012.92 a month. Hardly a handsome sum on which to live.
I never had a pensionable job. Presenters in broadcasting were always hired on contracts – effectively freelance, so no right to a whopping great pension.
I do have a private pension for which I’ve saved for years. I only wish I’d started saving earlier.
The money I earn enables me to go out to dinner with friends, go to the hairdresser and pay for decent seats in the theatre. But it’s not just the money that keeps me working, it’s the pleasure of keeping my brain curious and occupied. Nothing makes my blood boil more than reading about millennials worrying about how they’ll never be able to retire. Why would they want to if they’ve found something they love and find pleasure in continuing?
It’s not just the independent feminist in me that makes me determined to work till I drop.
Last year I spent time in a care home with my damaged spine. I met so many terribly sad women saying they were just waiting to die, their homes sold to pay for their care so no choice to return.
It made me even more eager to get home and back to work.
After all, mine is the first generation of women that understood the pleasure of working, using the education we’d received. We earn our own money and spend it as we chose. Many of us have never been dependent on a man or the state.
Most of my ‘retired’ friends who left big jobs, haven’t wanted to relinquish salaries entirely. Some have become humanist celebrants, delighting in leading funerals, births and marriages, others have become teachers, sharing their years of experience with the young.
I look back to my mother who hated being at home as chief cook and bottle washer but was too afraid to take a job in case people thought Dad couldn’t afford to keep us. She would have loved to enjoy the freedom I have had. Dad raised me with a northern Protestant work ethic with the watch words, ‘Neither borrower nor lender be.’ He officially retired from the company where he worked as a senior electrical engineer at 65. But the work did not stop. He burst with pride every time he was asked back to supervise a job that was not going as well as expected. He returned to help well into his 70s, when he had to give up to care for my mother.
It seems to me that my northern work ethic is rare in the South of England. Maybe it’s the slightly warmer weather.
I know several people in their 50s and 60s who yearn to put their feet up and watch telly all day, gazing at pamphlets showing couples lazing in deckchairs.
My response? Be careful what you wish for. After years of hard work, stepping away from the daily grind and being ‘free’ may feel exhilarating at first but then what? Will all-day TV keep your brain in gear in the way work does and who are you when you walk away? Jenni Murray journalist is all I ever wanted to be. Jenni Murray retiree isn’t me at all.
It strikes me that we could all take a leaf out of Mary Berry’s book. She baked me a cake to celebrate my last Woman’s Hour – and it was magnificent. She turned 90 on Tuesday and has never stopped working. If she’s anything to go by, I have plenty of years of work left in me.
Just say no to reality TV, Kate
Kate Garraway for ITV’s Good Morning Britain
Kate Garraway has signed up to join the cast of Celebrity Traitors – the show where Traitors and Faithfuls survive by deceiving each other. Brave girl. I recently turned down an offer to join the latest Celebrity Big Brother and, some time ago, I’m A Celebrity. How awful to embarrass yourself in front of the nation – except for a very good cause. I did strip off on TV once – for breast cancer.
How to tell a sex pest to get lost
Kate Humble on A Country Life For Half The Price
If only we were all as feisty as TV presenter Kate Humble. In a recent interview she shared the moment when, aged 22, she was propositioned by a director she was working with on a Channel 4 series.
After a day in the editing suite, he turned to her and said, ‘Should we go and have sex?’. Quick as a flash she said: ‘If that’s why you hired me, you’d better find someone else.’
That’s the way to do it. Just tell them to get lost and forget about it.
Men, it’s said, become grumpy because they find more things disgusting as they age. What rot! They just lose their power, their position and end up loafing at home, moaning.
Clooney’s right, he HAS lost it!
George Clooney signs autographs after performing in his new Broadway show Good Night, And Good Luck
Sorry George, but you’re right: you are too old for rom-coms. It’s funny how men’s attractiveness generally improves with age, but 63-year-old George, once the most gorgeous man on the planet, just looks a bit grey and tired.
How can there be proposals to charge people for going into our National Parks? I lived for some time in the Peak District, most of which is protected National Park. It is beautiful green land surrounded by cities. We must all be free to escape and wander in our countryside. No rural congestion charge, please.