Jane McDonald speaks out on losing her beloved partner and how she’s taking a break from the limelight

She reflected on taking an extended break as she chatted to Kaye Adams on her podcast, How To Be 60, where she said: "I'm a lot better than when I was on Loose Women.

"I can talk about him now and just feel great that I had that amazing time with him.

" And it's funny we should talk about retiring because he retired at 59 and he said ‘I promise you when you get to this age, you'll see a difference’. And I have.

"We had lots of plans and I think that's a part of grief as well – you go through the normal grief and the terrible, terrible time and then you grieve the life that you thought you were going to have.

"So when he died, he took our future. So I think that is, I've got to have a different life now and that's taken a bit of adjusting to, but I'll get there, because that's what we do, we get there."

Jane went on talk about the shock of a partner becoming ill.

“It's just a shock to your system completely,” she said.

"I think it's made me realise actually, how many summers have we got left and I want to do so much. I want to go on holiday, instead of filming one. I want to write, I want to be creative. I want to have time in my lovely home and I want to be here for my family.

"My niece is just about to have a baby and I want to be around for them all just for a while."

She added: "My life has changed a lot. But by God, I'm gonna enjoy every minute of it now. Because that's what we're supposed to do.

"I don't want to be sad, I don't want to be miserable. And Ed would have hated if I was, and my mother definitely would have hated it. So if there is this something out there, where they are watching us, I want them to think I'm okay. I'm okay. And that's because of you."

Talking about her friend Sue moving in with her, she said: "When you're on your own, there's always the wee small hours in the morning where everything seems a lot worse than it actually is.

"And if I wake up and I'm in a bad way, I know that Sue's just down the hall and I can get up and say ‘can you have a cup of tea with me’?

"I've achieved so many things in my life already, that I never thought I would and I've got a really great circle of friends, so it's time now to have a bit of fun.

"Now I'm getting to 60. The difference now in my tired level is quite quite big. So I'm just gonna put my feet up and watch Netflix like everybody else."