Menopause is perfectly normal and should be discussed openly

Sarah Lancashire won Best Drama Performance (Image: Getty) There were plaudits aplenty at last week’s National Television Awards but there was only one golden girl. The mesmerising star of Happy Valley, Sarah Lancashire, rightly basked in public adulation as she scooped the Best Drama Performance gong and the Special Recognition Award. Twice the enraptured audience rose to its feet to pay respect to one of the most gifted thespians of our era. Many of us fell in love with Sarah’s poignant and vulnerable barmaid Raquel Watts when she joined Coronation Street in 1991. All of us were beguiled and warmed by her tender portrayal of US TV chef Julia Child. We stood. We clapped. We stamped our feet and cheered. We were ecstatic at the chance to honour the woman who has entertained us, chameleon-like, in role after role for decades. Yet something seemed amiss. Most women – and a smattering of chaps – were in filmy, floaty, frothy evening gowns. The awards ceremony has always been a dressy extravaganza. It’s a night for dusting off the cleavage, squeezing into vertiginous stilettos and rocking out the Spanx and chandelier earrings. Love Islanders routinely sashay along in wisps of chiffon arranged to show the world the parts where the sun normally doesn’t shine. It’s a full-on ballgown fest and a night to shimmer in sequins and glory in rainbow hues. Yet Sarah was in top-to-toe black. There’s nothing wrong with subdued sophistication, and I defend to the death any woman’s right to wear whatever the heck she feels great in, But the most celebrated person in the arena, on one of the year’s clammiest nights, was swathed in a somewhat shapeless dress and swamped by a big black coat. Her acceptance speeches were exemplary but there was a definite undercurrent of what I can only describe as wistful pathos. Could there, I wondered, be a cloud on Sarah’s horizon? Then came the confirmation. Sarah, 59 next month, is beset by what she candidly calls ‘the most terrible menopause’. She is aflame with hot flushes, mired in brain-fog and embarrassed to find herself in Sainsbury’s with no idea why she came in. She’s struggling to get the right level of HRT. Davina McCall, Mariella Frostrup and the battalion of menopause warriors have been touchingly honest about the tough battle to find empathetic doctors clued-up enough to help women navigate the change of life. Sarah tells us she’s slap-bang in the middle of the fight. Her honesty is admirable. As someone who can’t take HRT now in my 12th year of scary symptoms, I cannot identify more strongly with her plight. Menopause used to be taboo. Now it’s discussed constantly. But as Sarah shows, there’s still a mountain of treatment and understanding to climb. Stormzy and Maya Jama (Image: Getty) Those in the know say Love Island host Maya Jama, 29, and rapper Stormzy, 30, are off to couples’ counselling after rekindling their romance last month. What a smart strategy. We all know that whether love lingers on the back burner or reignites in a lambent flame, exes are still exes for a reason. Holding a torch for a former squeeze isn’t enough to iron out the blips that troubled the relationship in the first place. An astute professional can stop reunited exes falling into familiar patterns and making the same mistakes all over again. Full marks to the couple for having the insight to get help and the humility to take guidance. None of this rekindling stuff is easy. Prince Harry flourishes at the Invictus Games Harry is chronically underemployed. Just watch him unfurl and flourish in the fun and flurry of the Invictus Games. Grinning broadly and proudly fist-pumping the throng at the heart of this worthwhile championship of his own vision and creation, Harry is evidently in his element. He is trained and built for more than cleaning out the chicken coop on his Montecito compound and making pasta collages with Archie and Lilibet. The man needs a bracing and demanding full-time job. He hasn’t looked so ebullient and like his old self since ‘Megxit’. He clearly misses colleagues, contemporaries and a challenge. Someone sign him up. Miriam Margolyes speaks on her weight (Image: PA) Miriam Margolyes laments her voluptuous curves, saying: ‘The one thing I should have conquered is my weight. I am a blubber mass… I am fat. And to be fat and 82 is pathetic’. Lord, it is anything but. Miriam – keeper of a store of anecdotes so hilarious that when the technology failed at an awards ceremony she spontaneously took to the stage and had the audience in stitches till the glitch was repaired – must know that to be 82 is a triumph in itself. The Bible promised us just three-score years and 10. To be as ebullient and controversial as Miriam, above, bestriding stages and writing an excoriating autobiography is stellar. Miriam: your weight doesn’t define or limit you. It simply proclaims that you satiated your appetites and enjoyed a bawdy good time. No solution in store as online shopping paints the town dead Dame Sharon White, chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, has warned the Government that deserted high streets will become looting grounds for gangs, and wants to set up a royal commission into reviving our town centres. Please, spare us another prolonged, expensive and ultimately pointless inquiry. Ask anyone you know why they don’t schlep into the town centre to go shopping and they’ll make no bones about telling you. Without Debenhams there’s no draw. Indeed, even when Debenhams was open it wasn’t draw enough. Parking is pricey. Dragging purchases back on public transport is hell. Retail assistants respond to requests for goods: ‘It’s not here but we have it online.’ Most people would rather shop from the comfort of their own sofas. We know the problem and deep down, sorrowfully, one doubts there’s a solution. Being a BBC presenter meant that I went into work a couple of Sundays a year to rehearse protocol and procedure for the sad event of a senior royal death. The script was set in stone and the handover to a central broadcast on BBC Radio 4 had to be seamless. Foremost among the instructions were these: never under any circumstances may a presenter announce His or Her Majesty’s demise. A neutral comment must be made, and then the all-important handover. Our endeavours turned out to be null and void. When the Duke of Edinburgh died Buckingham Palace tweeted the news and the BBC crashed into normal programming with a scrambled announcement obliterating all output. When the Queen passed away I was at Talk TV. There I was privileged to reveal the sad news myself. I did so in tears, jolted by the haste with which I had to end the bulletin with the words: ‘God save the King.’