You might pee your pants at this show, but it could be menopause too

Time to finish off Cooke's book, It's The Menopause: What you need to know in your 40s, 50s and beyond, which kind of kicked the whole show off.

Time to apply my own estrogen gel, my hormone therapy of choice, before I settle in, one pump on each forearm daily.

I was sure I'd pumped a portion into my left hand. Where was the gel? Never mind. Reapply.

So I get into bed and pick the book up to read the final two chapters, and splat. A blob of gel slips off the bookcover and lands on my face.

Welcome to menopause.

Welcome to brain fog, to hot flushes, to sleep problems, heavy periods, anxiety, dry skin, bad sex, weight gain, joint pain, skin tags and constipation.

Welcome indeed.

But basically Cooke and Lucy do want to welcome us to menopause. They want us to embrace it, to find comfort in it, learn more about it, and basically have some fun along the way. We have to go through it, so why not go through it together?

"You're very smart putting it on before bed, Karen," says Lucy about my nightly routine. I don't dare tell her that my ablutions also usually involve ridding myself of pesky chin hairs.

"What I usually do is get up in the morning, get completely dressed in my winter clothes in Melbourne and then go, 'Oh my God, I've forgotten to put the gel on', strip off, wave myself around until it's dry and then get dressed again. It is so annoying."

Cooke and Lucy have been friends for more than 30 years.

They've co-hosted radio programs including Foxy Ladies, the breakfast shift on Sydney's 2Day FM, and a national drive show on the Hit network. Even before they met in person, they were fans of each other's work.

"One night in 1993 I was doing a bit for the ABC's The Late Show, with The D Generation, which some people might remember, and it was about this dreadful magazine called Single Living," says Lucy.

"I look back now and realise I did a lot of material about that magazine because I could not have been more single at the time. I was in a big glass house throwing stones.

"I had a copy of the magazine for this show and, even though I was already a big fan of Kaz's, I had no idea what she looked like ...."

Cooke takes over.

"I was at home watching, recovering from some gynaecological surgery for endometriosis, because a woman's hormonal life is never done, and they'd given me the parting gift of haemorrhoids.

"There I was, laying face-down on the couch, clenching an ice pack between my buttocks and watching Judith, who I always thought was hilarious, and then she holds up the magazine and says, 'What a bunch of losers reading this' and there I was on the cover."

Cooke tracked down Lucy's number, abused her, and they've been friends ever since.

When she published It's The Menopause in October 2023, Cooke asked Lucy to host the book launch.

They had so much fun, they decided to turn the premise into a live show called Kaz and Jude's Menopausal Night Out, which begins its national tour in early May.

They promise plenty of laughs, question-and-answer sessions and lots of useful information. They're even going to try to get the air-conditioning turned up in every venue.

But there's a serious message behind the fun-filled evening.

"There's still such a stigma attached to menopause," says Cooke.

"People just don't want to talk about it.

"Women have been told to ignore their perimenopausal symptoms and menopause health risks for centuries. Imagine a man who goes to the doctor and says, 'I've put on 10 kilos while eating the same as I always did, I fly into rages; I think I'm a failure; I can't concentrate, sleep or remember anything at work. I bleed so much without warning it soaks through my clothes; I have heart palpitations; I can't sleep to the point of feeling demented; my penis is itchy all the time and it hurts to have sex; and I just want to leave my family and live in a bucket'.

"Do you reckon the doctor would say, 'Well you just have to put up with it'?"

It's The Menopause sits perfectly at one end of Cooke's run of books, where she's taken us through pregnancy, parenting, women's stuff, girl stuff, body and beauty and more.

Once again, she's interviewed countless experts, studied the latest research.

More than 9000 women answered her survey about their own experiences of perimenopause and menopause.

Both Cooke and Lucy are kind of sceptical about the recent rush of celebrities coming out and sharing their own "journey".

"I'm going to go out on a limb and say people like Oprah Winfrey, Naomi Watts and Elle MacPherson, who have products to sell, are not the people I want to listen to about menopause," says Cooke.

"Jude and I are not trying to sell you anything, not a wellness product, or a medication, or a moisturiser, we just want to give people information that's been checked by the experts."

I do try to convince them that perhaps there is a market for some Lucy Lube.

That with every ticket purchase there is a little gift bag with some treats.

"Oh gosh, Karen, we have been sent some wonderful free stuff and we were even contacted by a woman who wanted to offer us a lube deal," says Lucy.

"But we said no, we even knocked back the water bottles that had 'Still Moist' written on the side of them."

That said, they are glad celebrities have brought the conversation about menopause into the mainstream media in some form.

"It's something our own mothers never spoke about," says Cooke.

Lucy remembers her mother putting on her foundation in front of the air-conditioner, with the sweat pouring off her.

"She was clearly having a hot flush, I think my mum had a lot of the symptoms of menopause and she went through it for a long time.

"But she was that generation and Irish Catholic on top of that.

"She was never going to talk about anything to do with the lower half of her body."

Even now, says Cooke, many women still stay silent about menopause for a number of reasons.

"It might be because of cultural traditions, or it was a forbidden subject in their family, or they don't even think their feelings and physical symptoms are related to it, or they feel shame about being older, or are afraid of being labelled as old or cranky at home or at work," she says.

"We want to keep that conversation going but we want it to be an informed conversation."

Cooke says there are two things which are imperative to get you through menopause: a good GP and good friends.

"The book talks about how to find a good GP and what the right questions are to ask, but I'd like to think, if you don't have friends and family to talk about it with, the book is like that conversation," she says.

It's full of quotes from women who answered the survey. She read every one of the 76,000 replies.

"I started to feel anxious and unlovable, depressed and didn't realise it had anything to do with menopause. How would I know? No one talks about it." Ros, 55.

"I feel like a stranger in my own body and I don't like it." Linda, 51.

"Hormones made me feel really horny. Took a specialist to sort it out for me. It's not something you can tell someone without sounding like a joke." Sandi, 55.

"My much younger female boss suggested dismissively the symptoms were just the same as pregnancy, until I reminded her that pregnancy has an end date, is very visible and well supported in the workplace." Margaret, 56.

The management, indeed recognition, of menopause in the workplace is one area they are both interested in.

"We just need more compassion, so many people are having a pretty horrible time, particularly at work, where people are too scared to talk about what's happening. The more we talk about it the better," says Cooke.

They also want to remind us that it's not all doom and gloom.

"I'm not saying all you need is a positive attitude," says Cooke.

"But ... we do only get one life (I think) and many of us will be perimenopausal for years and 'in menopause' for decades. So it's not a bad time to re-evaluate, do a life inventory, find a way to feel optimistic. If you want to.

"Don't think about what you should do, but you're in the last half or third of your life, think about what you want to do."

That's the real message of the show.

"Most of the women who answered the survey said what got them through was the camaraderie and connections between girlfriends, that's what the show is like," says Cooke.

Lucy is even more direct.

"It's about giving zero f - - ks, it's about realising we're all going through this together. Kaz and I are both at the point in our careers where we just don't want to do shit that we don't want to do, and this was a gig I desperately wanted to do.

"I get to work with an incredibly old, close friend, and be in a room of women who want to talk and laugh about things that affect us all."

There'll be plenty of laughs. Come prepared. You know what I mean.