‘There’s lots of life in us’ – Ruth Langsford on women feeling ‘invisible’ after 50

Her TV career has spanned more than three decades, she’s starred on Strictly Come Dancing and has a hugely popular clothing brand on QVC.

But there is always room for firsts and this month, Ruth Langsford’s first book, titled Feeling Fabulous, is published, ticking the box of a new milestone.

“Talking about feeling fabulous is what gives you joy, and what gives me joy and what gives you joy might be completely different things,” explains the 65-year-old.

“It’s learning to find the joy, which sometimes is very difficult. For all of us, whatever problems you have, difficulties you’re going through, they seem so heavy at the time, and it’s very difficult to see any joy. You can’t find the joy.

“And I would say, having been through very difficult things myself, that the joy is always there. You just need to look for it.

“It can be a gorgeous cup of coffee on your own in the quiet in a café in a corner where you don’t want to speak to anybody. It can be walking the dog. It can be reading a book. It can be changing your hair up and going, you know, [you] just want a completely different look.

“So it’s so many things for me are rolled into feeling fabulous. It’s not just one thing.”

Langsford has been a loved face on TV screens in a career that has seen her interview former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, co-host Channel 5 documentary series How The Other Half Lives, and in 2024, she was among the presenters celebrating Loose Women’s 25th anniversary.

Outside of TV presenting, she was a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing in 2017, where she was partnered with Anton Du Beke before he became a judge on the BBC show.

Apart from regularly presenting on ITV’s Loose Women, having begun on the show in the 1990s, she also has a clothing brand on television shopping channel QVC.

“I’ve been asked to do a book many times. I’ve been asked to do an autobiography, and I’ve always said no, because at the time, I thought, who’s going to be interested in my life?” she says.

“A lot has happened in my life over the last 10-15, years, and I think I have a lot more life experience now, and because it’s not an autobiography, it’s a memoir, I felt that I had something to say about various things.

“About Alzheimer’s, having both parents with Alzheimer’s, about grief and loss, having lost my sister and my dad, about not divorce per se, but about finding myself on my own at 65 years old and thinking, wow, what does life hold for me now?”

She adds: “Also I feel very strongly that so many women start saying they feel invisible once they get to 50, they talk about, I feel invisible. There’s nothing out there for us.

“And I want to go, yes, don’t be invisible. Shout and scream and wave and go, ‘Hi, I’m still here’. You know, we’re still here, and there’s lots of life in us. And you know, we shouldn’t be made to feel invisible.”

In the book she writes about her sister Julia, who took her own life in 2019, and her mum Joan, who is in her 90s and is living with Alzheimer’s, with her dad having also died from the same disease.

Her feelings ahead of it being released are “a mixture” of excitement and a bit of nervousness, she says.

“Each step actually of the process has made me more confident,” she explains.

“Certain chapters that I thought would be difficult, I then realised that actually I wanted to talk about my dad, I wanted to talk about my sister.

“So then I felt happy, because I wasn’t just talking about sadness, I was talking about them and our relationship and how wonderful they were.

“So I started to enjoy the process more. I’m not nervous thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve put myself out there with my personal life’, because there are some things I don’t discuss and will never discuss publicly.

“But over the years, on Loose Women and This Morning, I’ve discussed a lot of these things, but maybe not in such great depth. So I’ve never really hidden my personal life.

“But I believe all of us have a right to say, ‘I lay out what I want to lay out’. There are certain things I say, well, that’s not for public consumption.”

In May 2024 she and broadcaster Eamonn Holmes announced they were divorcing, having been together for over two decades. The couple, who married in June 2010, and have one son, Jack, also previously presented ITV’s This Morning together.

In the book, Langsford writes: “I expected Eamonn and me to be together for ever and knowing this was not going to happen was incredibly hard to come to terms with.”

She also writes about speaking to a therapist, and says she learned “lots of tools to deal with just life in general”.

She explains: “I think they (counsellors) don’t know you. They don’t know you or the people in your situation, they look at the bigger picture, and they talk you through in a much calmer way about lots of things.

“So I would be a big advocate for therapy for whatever you might need it for.”

She adds: “I’ve had some difficult times in my life, but I’ve heard of far worse that people go through. So I’m not here to kind of go, ‘Oh, poor me, victim me’.

“It’s just life. What life throws at you sometimes.

“I think if people see you on TV and someone’s done your hair, and you’ve got something lovely on, and it all looks terribly glamorous. But you know, everyone has their s**t going on.”

Feeling Fabulous: Be Your Best Self, No Matter What Life Throws At You by Ruth Langsford is published in hardback by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £22. Available February 26.