Trisha Goddard was praised as she made her debut as a guest presenter on Good Morning Britain. The TV star, 66, joined Richard Madeley to host ITV’s breakfast show on 13 and 14 August, days after she spoke about her terminal breast cancer diagnosis on the programme.
Trisha – who fronted her own talk show in the ‘90s and 2000s and now lives in America – was a guest presenter, filling in for Kate Garraway. ‘Not going to lie… started off a little bit nervous but Richard Madeley and the GMB team are just so sweet and supportive, so managed to get into my stride,’ she said.
Viewers were thrilled to see her back on British TV, with some calling for her to become a more permanent addition on the show. ‘I am loving Trisha presenting on GMB!’ one said, with another adding, ‘Trisha is a terrific presenter.’ A third remarked, ‘It’s refreshing to have Trisha on GMB. Can’t we have her as a regular co-presenter?... Bring in Trisha full time!”
What has Trisha Goddard said about her illness?
Trisha – who has daughters Billie, 34, and Madison, 30, with ex-husband Mark Grieve – opened up about her diagnosis with secondary breast cancer earlier this month. She discovered that the incurable cancer had returned, this time to her hip, when she had a serious fall at her home in Connecticut, US, in 2022. However, she chose to keep the news of her stage four cancer private from her TalkTV and CNN colleagues and the public.
‘I was grappling with how to deal with it myself. Plus I just wanted to work and be me,’ she said on GMB. ‘With CNN and my colleagues there, they didn’t know that I had no hair, that I had no feeling in my legs from the treatment, because I had chemo every week for four and a half months.’
She previously said, ‘My worry is that people will start seeing me as a frail little thing, and that if [the news] got out, I’d be judged, or people would change the way they are with me, or that I wouldn’t work.’ But she admitted that keeping the ‘difficult secret’ became ‘tough’ as time went on. ‘I can’t lie; I can’t keep making up stories. It gets to a stage, after a year and a half, when keeping a secret becomes more of a burden than anything else,’ she added.
When was Trisha Goddard diagnosed with cancer?
The star, who took part in Dancing On Ice in 2020, recovered from her first breast cancer diagnosis in 2008. 16 years later, she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, with her treatment starting the morning after her fourth wedding in 2022. She underwent daily radiation for three weeks and weekly chemotherapy for over four months before opting for ‘life prolonging care’ for the disease.
‘It’s not going to go away. And with that knowledge comes grief, and fear. But I must keep enjoying what I have always enjoyed,’ she told Hello!.
Trisha, who presents shows on TalkTV and CNN, is determined not to be ‘a poster girl for cancer’. ‘It’s not who I am. It’s not why I’m here,’ she said. ‘Also, I didn’t want to read words like ‘dying’ and ‘terminal’ or ‘battling’. Or ‘inspirational’ because it’s all b******s.’