There are so many positive benefits to having sex – so, says Gabby Logan to midlife women: ‘Use it or lose it’

For most women there comes a point when they realise they’ve hit middle age with a bang.

It could be experiencing a menopausal meltdown and hurling your husband’s dinner at the wall as Rod Stewart’s wife Penny Lancaster admitted to recently.

In the case of sports presenter Gabby Logan, it was catching sight of her face in a mirror aged 46. Spotting lined cheeks, she saw that, despite feeling young and energetic, ‘the juiciness of youth had all but gone’ from her complexion.

Shortly after that, Gabby launched her podcast The Mid.Point, where she chats to celebrity guests and experts about the challenges and dilemmas faced at this stage in life.

It’s meant women coming up to her in the street to chat about their own midlife issues.

Gabby with her retired rugby union player husband Kenny Logan – they met 25 years ago on a night out with friends in West London and Kenny proposed a year later

‘Before the podcast it was always blokes wanting to talk to me about sport,’ she says. ‘These women just enjoy hearing the conversations and listening to people they’ve seen on TV who may look as if they have this amazing, glamorous life but are going through the same things as them. It’s that commonality of experience that’s so reassuring.

‘If you’re the wife of Rod Stewart and you’re talking about throwing the dinner against a wall because you’re in a menopausal rage, then it can happen to anyone.’

Four years on from the launch of the podcast and Gabby, 51, has brought out a book, The Midpoint Plan. It collates the best information gleaned from the podcast, broken down into chapters that cover everything from mental health and fitness to beauty and finances.

There are also straight-talking chapters on love, sex and relationships and it’s here that Gabby, best known for fronting major sporting events (she’s now hosting BBC Paris Olympics coverage) is surprisingly frank.

She discusses her own midlife loss of libido and how her husband’s devastating prostate cancer diagnosis could have had a serious impact on their sex life.

In 2021 Kenny Logan, retired rugby union player and devoted husband, was listening to his wife’s podcast with guest Davina McCall where they discussed plummeting hormone levels.

Concerned that his own testosterone levels might be in decline, he decided to book in for a blood test. The results revealed that while his hormones were fine, he had an elevated PSA number (prostate specific antigen). Further tests showed prostate cancer.

The decision was taken to remove the prostate to prevent reoccurrence, but the radical procedure carried a risk that Kenny might lose erectile function.

Thankfully it turned out not to be the case and once Kenny was out of the woods, the couple did a brutally frank Mid.Point podcast episode about his experience.

On the show they joke about their rather comedic first attempt at post-surgery sex with Gabby impatiently telling Kenny, ‘it’s not working!’ and him complaining, ‘you’re not giving me a chance!’

Gabby is keen to stress that sometimes the simplest, most practical gesture can be as romantic as flowers. The key is to keep working on your relationship

‘I was led by Kenny totally on that,’ says Gabby. ‘He wanted to be open and honest because it’s the best way to connect to other men and help them. He was lucky in that his functionality — my kids hate me using that word — came back within about nine months, but there were times when he feared it might never return. I could see a lot of dark thoughts in him. He was surprised by that.’

Shortly before his diagnosis Gabby had been experiencing her own issues in the form of a sudden loss of libido. At the time she had no idea it is a classic perimenopausal symptom.

‘Before I went on HRT we’d always had a very healthy relationship . . . and then it wasn’t quite as important. I wasn’t feeling that same sense of excitement about things. I had no idea it was perimenopause; I hadn’t even noticed that my periods had started to drop off.’

Gabby began a regime of HRT that includes testosterone, the hormone she credits with giving her back her mojo, but which many women run scared from.

‘We have a lot more testosterone in our body than women realise,’ she says. ‘Once I spoke to various doctors, I didn’t feel conflicted at all about it. You have to have a hell of a lot of it pumping around your body before you start growing a beard and speaking in a baritone voice! I put a little gel on the inside of my arm, and now get a few dark hairs growing there that I never had before, but I just get rid of them.’

With Kenny’s bits back to working order and Gabby’s libido restored, as much as it may embarrass her 19-year-old twins Reuben and Lois, it seems normal service has been restored.

‘There are so many positive health benefits from having sex,’ says Gabby.

‘The message that came through from the experts on the podcast was ‘use it or lose it’. There are some long-term relationships where people are happy to let the physical side slide, but I always wonder if one person is as happy about it as the other.’

Gabby and Kenny met 25 years ago on a night out with friends in West London. The attraction was instant and less than a year later he proposed at the top of the Wallace monument in Stirling. The couple have tried to keep those bold romantic gestures present in their relationship ever since.

‘I hope Kenny would say I was romantic,’ says Gabby. ‘For his 50th birthday the kids and I produced a piece of artwork. We created about 30 A4 canvases and each one featured something that was meaningful to him. Some were montages, some painted by us, others were written words.

‘It didn’t even cost that much but it took a lot of time and commitment and many secret sessions at my artist friend’s studio and Kenny was really touched.’

K enny isn’t too shabby in the romance department either. He pulled out all the stops on their wedding anniversary two years ago. Gabby says: ‘We were going out for dinner and as we reached the end of our road my daughter called to say I had to come home as one of the dogs was sick.

‘We went back to the house, where we’ve got this little copse of trees, Kenny had set up a table. He planned the whole thing with the kids and they’d cooked for us and acted as waiters. It was one of the loveliest evenings ever — so romantic and thoughtful.’

Gabby is keen to stress that sometimes the simplest most practical gesture can be as romantic as flowers. The key is to keep working on your relationship.

‘You wouldn’t get a rusty old lawnmower out of the garage that you’d not used in a decade and expect it to work perfectly, would you? It’s the same with a relationship if you don’t devote your energy towards maintaining it.

‘A lot of people get divorced in this period of life, once the business of the kids and all those things that kept you together as a team start to disappear.

‘Most people who’ve been married a long time will go through ups and downs. Get married and everything is perfect for the next 30 years? I don’t think so!’

There’s something distinctly relatable about Logan, whether she’s analysing athletic performance on track and field, or, ahem, on a more domestic front. Perhaps it’s the bracing honesty of the middle-aged woman at the top of her game.

‘It doesn’t mean you don’t care or that you can go around being a total a** to people,’ she agrees. ‘I think it’s the realisation that you can’t please everybody, and you can’t live your life trying to.’

The Midpoint Plan by Gabby Logan is available now.