Dame Patricia Routledge and the Art of Aging Gracefully

This week, we say farewell to Dame Patricia Routledge — the unforgettable Hyacinth “Bouquet” from Keeping Up Appearances. At 96, Dame Patricia left behind more than laughter; she left lessons on living fully at every age.

From British sitcom fame to singing opera in Italian at 60, painting flowers at 80, and baking rye bread at 95, Dame Patricia never stopped learning, laughing, or blooming. In this episode, I reflect on her remarkable life and what it teaches us about embracing aging — not as an ending, but as a beautiful new chapter.

We’ll also talk about:

• The surprising way Patricia Routledge found peace in her later years
• How to keep growing, learning, and creating joy at any age
• My own thoughts on aging, reinvention, and why “you still have time”

👉 Plus, I share a few podcast recommendations — including You Still Have Time and Impariamo l’Italiano Piano Piano — for anyone looking to keep their mind and heart young.

As Dame Patricia once said:

“Growing older is not the closing act. It can be the most exquisite chapter if you let yourself bloom again.”

Rest in peace, Dame Patricia — and thank you for showing us how to bloom. 🌷

🎧 Listen now and don’t forget to follow, rate, and share Bill Monty’s Guide for Getting Older.
Stay safe, stay kind, and keep blooming.

Mentioned in This Episode:

Learn Italian: We learn Italian step by step | Impariamo l'italiano piano piano

You Still Have Time podcast: You Still Have Time | Podcast on Spotify

#AgingGracefully #PatriciaRoutledge #KeepingUpAppearances #BritishComedy #BillMontysGuide #GettingOlder #YouStillHaveTime #PositiveAging #Inspiration #LifeAfter60

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:08

Specifically getting older someone sit back. Have a cup of coffee or whatever you like. And let's discuss the concept of education while you're aging.

SPEAKER_01: 0:28

Welcome to Bill Monty's God for getting older.

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

Much as you've heard of Dame Patricia Rutledge before. She started the British comedy Keeping Up Appearances. This was a big hit in the United Kingdom. You can still see it on Brit Box if you have that streaming service. And PBS also runs this show. I've watched it a few times, and I find it very funny. I like British comedies. I'm a huge fan of the show Faulty Towers. I actually think that might be the funniest sitcom ever made, anywhere at any time. I know people say I love Lucy or All in the Family, or I don't know if there's any recent shows that come up to that standard. But for me, whenever I'm feeling a little bit down, I gotta tell you, I watch Faulty Towers. But keeping up appearances, I actually have a good friend who loves this show and has he can sit there and recite lines as it's as it's on TV. She was best known for playing the snobby sitcom character Hyacinth Bucket, which that character always insisted that you pronounce Bouquet. The show ran from 1990 to 1995. Well, this week Dame Patricia died at the age of 96. And things that she did in her life, I think, are a good lesson for us as we look at the process of growing older and aging. Because Dame Patricia was somebody who didn't accept any limitations that others tried to put on her because she was growing older. Now I know we can all look at people, especially celebrities, that's the easiest because who really knows the people around us on any kind of celebrity type level. But certainly George Burns and Betty White, as they aged, we were always cheering them on and enjoying what they did. And I know that from personal experience, as I'm aging, there isn't a lot of celebration going on sometimes. People are more inclined to think about what they can't do as opposed to what they can do. My friends Harold and Hope, who have the podcast I've talked about before, You Still Have Time, talk about this on their podcast. It's called You Still Have Time, You Should Listen To It. It's really Delightful. I'll put a link to it in the show notes below if you'd like to give it a try. But they're very good at talking about looking at the process of aging and the things you can do, especially as you enter retirement. For some people, retirement, though, is not really an option. Yours truly would say this is true. Unless everyone decides to support me by contributing because you just love the podcast, Bill Monty's Guide for Getting Older. And uh I do take large bills. You can just visit uh the website and uh you can hit that support button, and uh I'd really appreciate it. Thank you very much. That's my retirement plan. That and winning a lot of. So far, none of this has worked out for me. Anyway, getting back to Dame Patricia. When she turned 95, the BAFTA nominee and Tony Award winner wrote on the Jay Speaks blog about her career and accepting life as she got older. I will be turning ninety-five this coming Monday, she wrote. In my younger years, I was often filled with worry, worry that I wasn't quite good enough, that no one would cast me again, that I wouldn't live up to my mother's hopes. But these days life begins in peace and ends in gratitude. She admitted that her life didn't begin to take shape until she was in her forties. She was working on provincial stages and radio plays and West End productions. But despite this success, or at least being a working actor, and when you're when you're an actor working on a regular basis, that is success. But despite all that, she says she felt adrift. She was searching for a home within myself that I hadn't quite found. Boy, can't we all say that, especially as we age? I don't know if it's getting to that point where you say, I wish I had fill in the blank. You know, going back to the episode I did about one day, when that time you realize that you're running out of one day's and one day becomes today for all the things that you want to do. But when she was age fifty, she accepted the lead role in the sitcom that I spoke about before, keeping up appearances, which she thought would just be a small part in a little series. She wrote, I never imagined it would take me into people's living rooms and hearts around the world, and truthfully, that role taught me to accept my own quirks, and it healed something in me. This is what it gets interesting in talking about Dame Patricia's life. When she turned 60, she began to learn Italian so that she could sing opera in its native language. That's such an interesting thing to do at that age. I had talked uh previously about my wife and I taking a trip to Montreal. So for about four or five months, I took one of these online kind of courses, you know, there's an app to try and learn some French so that at least I could try and speak a little bit of French when we were in Montreal. Uh to say that was a failure would be an understatement. When we got to Montreal, I couldn't remember one single word except poutine. But keeping that in mind, she decided to learn Italian so that she could sing opera in its native language. I mean, wow. She also stated that she learned how to live alone without feeling lonely, and read poetry aloud each evening not to perfect my diction, but to quiet my soul. When she was in her 70s, she returned to performing Shakespeare on stage despite believing that she had aged out of the roles. I hope she wasn't trying to do Juliet. But to go back on stage and tackle Shakespeare, I did Shakespeare when I was a much younger person. And uh it was some of the toughest and yet most rewarding work that I ever did. So I understand why she wanted to do that, but that she wanted to take that challenge in her seventies. I had nothing to prove, she said. I stood on those boards with stillness and audiences felt that. I was no longer performing. I was simply being. I get that. I understand what she's talking about there. When she aged into her eighties, she tried her hand at watercolors, painting pictures of flowers from her garden, hats from her youth, and faces that she remembered from the London underground. When she reached ninety-five, she says she still wrote her letters by hand, and she learned to bake rye bread. I still breathe deeply every morning, she said. I still adore laughter, though I no longer try to make anyone laugh. I love the quiet more than ever. She concluded her notes by saying, I'm writing this to tell you something simple. Growing older is not the closing act. It can be the most exquisite chapter if you let yourself bloom again. Let these years ahead of you be your treasure years. You don't need to be famous, you don't need to be flawless, you only need to show up fully for the life that is still yours. Rest in peace, Dame Patricia. Those are great words. And I think again, the wisdom that inhabits us as we age, this is what's so important for us to pass on to younger generations. Also important to remember that no matter where we are in our life, there's still joy to be found, there's still learning to be had. There's still the chance to change. There is no reason to sit back and say, I'm done. Let it end. Until that's the point where you really feel it needs to be. Don't let anyone else tell you that you can't. Just because of your age. Because you can, my friends. Dame Patricia showed us the way. And we can show each other. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Bill Monty's Guide for Getting Older. By the way, if you would like to learn Italian, I happen to have a friend who has a podcast. Her name is Myra Rhodes, and I'll put a link to uh her podcast where she teaches people to speak Italian. It's called, I'm going to wreck this, I know, Impriamo l'Italiano Piano Piano, which is learning Italian step by step. It's a delightful, fun podcast. And again, I'll put the link in there. I wonder if Dame Patricia would have liked Myra's podcast about learning Italian. I do want to give credit where credit is due here. A lot of the information uh on the story of Dame Patricia came from an article that I did find online that was put there by the Independent. Independent does some great articles about what's going on in the world and people in the world, so go on and give that a listen. But thank you. I want to acknowledge uh the contribution of that article to this episode. Next week, we will be looking at Medicare and Medicaid, the threats that are happening in America to that. And I want to tell you a story that I promised a little while back about a man named Peter David. And after the next episode, that will wrap us up for season two of Bill Monty's Guide for Getting Older, where we will take a short break before coming back with season three. As I ask that if you enjoyed this, please be sure to hit that follow or subscribe button, leave us a comment, a rating, or review. And as always, please remember to be safe and be kind.

SPEAKER_01: 10:45

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