Mariella Frostrup admits that she and her husband put sex in the diary

Mariella Frostrup has revealed that she puts sex with her husband in her diary to make sure it doesn’t “get by the wayside”.

The 60-year-old journalist and presenter has been married to human rights lawyer Jason McCue since April 2003 and is the parents of Molly, 18, and Dan, 17.

She said upper sante: ‘Diarising sex works for me because if I know that’s what I’m doing on a particular day, it can be something I look forward to!’

“It’s so easy to end up with a to-do list where being physically intimate with your partner is no longer a priority. For many people, sex falls by the wayside… but it is very important in a relationship to maintain it.

“In middle age, you go through a period where you’re not driven by the same urges and you’re not having sex out of overwhelming passion but for a different, perhaps deeper reason: intimacy.”

Throwback: The TV presenter, photographed in 1992, was known for her career and for her famous parties with George Clooney.

Mariella has previously spoken to MailOnline about how perimenopause has affected her life, which usually begins seven to 10 years before menopause.

She said: ‘My two children were born when I was in my early 40s, and I was so busy being a mother that when things started to go wrong at 49, I had no idea what was going on.

‘With so much talk about menopause and so many taboos on the subject being broken, I am horrified to confess that I spent two years of low-level anxiety and high-level insomnia, oblivious to the idea that my complete change of character and the alarming inability to cope could have something to do with midlife hormones.

‘Irrational anxiety completely baffled me. There was no respite, no filter. I’d be as worried about whether I’d remembered to put carrots on my online shopping list as I was about getting home in time to relieve the babysitter.

“My temper was horrible as I teetered on the brink of confusion and despair, wondering who was the shrew in the house and why, if my heart rate was any indication, even I was afraid of her.

My work as a radio presenter is based on quick responses and short-term recall of salient events. When you have mental agility and memory, it’s downright terrifying to find yourself falling into blank spaces.

“Permanent exhaustion, irritability, and brain fog seemed to affect every part of my life, sapping joy, destroying self-confidence, and removing the ability to perform as well as I wanted to. For someone used to seeing the big picture and generally able to overcome irritability or grumpiness to get things done, this was frustrating and annoying.’

She continued: ‘Finding the reason was no longer in my skill set.

Her love: Mariella was famously single until her late 30s, when she met Jason McCue at a charity walk in Nepal. She welcomed her two children, Molly and Dan, when she was 40 years old.

“As my stress levels increased, my nights lengthened from my inability to sleep, and my days passed in a haze of exhaustion.

‘We could joke about the ‘greatest moments’, but it’s not even slightly funny. For memory that was once fast and reliable to dwindle is completely baffling.

This interview with Mariella Frostrup appears in the March 2023 issue of Top Santé, on sale February 17. Reserve your copy now at shop.kelsey.co.uk/TSA.