Book Club Meets: Namaste Motherf*ckers! How to nail midlife, with Cally Beaton
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.6 • 15.2K Ratings
🗓️ 12 September 2025
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Cally Beaton spent much of her career in male-dominated board rooms. She, in her own words, was a ‘boring businessperson’. Now? She’s a stand up comedian!
Namaste Motherfuckers was the Happy Place Book Club pick for August. It’s Cally’s manifesto for embracing the radical change that comes with midlife and menopause, proving it’s never too late to reinvent your life.
In this chat with Fearne, Cally explains that she’s particularly passionate about better understanding perimenopause after being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder, and is candid about being a single mum to an autistic child.
Thank you to Headline Home for the use of Namaste Motherf*ckers audiobook, narrated by Cally Beaton.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | After a recent gig where I'd done a bit of menopause material. |
| 0:04.3 | Welcome to the Happy Place Book Club with me, Fern Cotton. |
| 0:07.7 | We were having a rollicking good chat until he said... |
| 0:10.8 | Today, namaste, motherfuckers, by Callie Beaton. |
| 0:13.7 | Not that he's got anything against female comics talking about periods or menopause or sex or whatever. |
| 0:19.8 | Or indeed, against female comics full stop. |
| 0:22.6 | But how did I think his mother and grandmother coped with menopause without needing to talk |
| 0:27.5 | about it all the time? Having briefly tied with slapping an estrogen patch over his still open |
| 0:32.5 | mouth, but they're very hard to come by, so why waste one? I responded by explaining that we'd all coped with lots of things in the past, |
| 0:40.1 | like dentistry without anaesthetic or passive smoking in public spaces |
| 0:45.0 | or dying in car accidents without seatbelts. |
| 0:48.5 | And how did he know they'd coped when women were routinely being locked in institutions |
| 0:53.0 | and given everything from valium to hysterectomies |
| 0:56.0 | when all they actually needed was HRT. |
| 0:59.0 | And if, for generations, men had been having their willies removed |
| 1:02.0 | because of anxiety, depression and an inability to regulate their own body temperature, |
| 1:07.0 | then I think we'd all feel able to agree that it's a pretty good thing. |
| 1:10.0 | It's finally on the agenda now. |
| 1:11.9 | Yes, right. |
| 1:13.4 | Are we going for a drink then or what? |
| 1:15.3 | No idea why I'm single. |
| 1:20.7 | Okay, let me give this book the respect of its full brilliant title. |
... |
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