Coronation Street legend Beverley Callard has disclosed that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer, sharing the news during an appearance on Irish TV on Friday evening.
The 68-year-old actress, renowned for portraying Rovers Return landlady Liz McDonald, revealed she received the devastating phone call from her consultant mere minutes before stepping onto the set of Irish soap Fair City for the first time.
“Literally 15, 20 minutes before I was in my dressing room at Fair City, getting ready to go on, and I was quite nervous and thinking, ‘I hope everybody thinks I’m all right’,” she told RTÉ’s Late Late Show host Patrick Kielty.
“And my consultant rang me and said, ‘You’ve got to come back to the UK’.”
Ms Callard reassured viewers that the disease had been caught at an early stage, placing her among thousands of women facing similar diagnoses.
“But I’m fine, I’m absolutely fine. My head was a bit mashed for the first few days,” she said.
“It’s very early stages, and I’m along with thousands of other women as well.”
The actress explained she would be travelling back to Britain on Saturday for approximately a fortnight of medical assessments.
Beverley Callard (right) with the Queen on the set of Corrie in 2010
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Doctors plan to examine her lymph nodes and lymph glands to determine whether the cancer has spread beyond its initial location.
“But then I need an operation and some radiotherapy, and then I’m coming back to Fair City, so I will be back in just a few weeks,” Ms C allard confirmed.
Ms Callard explained her decision to go public with her diagnosis rather than allowing the story to emerge through other channels.
“I just thought, the world is full of strong, feisty women and I love strong, feisty women, and I just thought, rather than read about it in a newspaper and it all be distorted and everything else, I just said it, so that’s it,” she said.
Beverley Callard
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The actress confirmed that her family and close friends had already been informed and were fully supportive.
Ms Callard has joined Fair City in the role of Lily, the estranged mother of Carrigstown resident Gwen Connolly, portrayed by Emily Lamey.
Her debut on the RTÉ One soap is scheduled for Thursday, February 19.
The actress was initially approached about the part nearly 12 months ago and admitted she had reservations about taking on another soap role.
Beverley Callard has been diagnosed with breast cancer
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“In the UK, it’s quite difficult to get, and so I was watching it on my computer, and I just became addicted to Fair Cit,y and I just thought, this is fantastic,” she explained.
“The editing is so good. The scripts are amazing. Got my husband to have a look at it. And I said, ‘I can’t say no to this’.”
Ms Callard and her husband, Jon McEwan, are relocating permanently to County Wicklow, with plans to collect the keys to their new property on March 1.
Ms Callard spent more than three decades on Coronation Street, having first joined the Manchester-based serial in 1989 before departing in 2020.
Beyond her soap career, she has appeared in comedy series Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, served as a Loose Women panellist, and participated in I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! in 2020.
