Drug battles, depression and cancer... TV Trisha’s fought them all to be fitter than ever I’ve made it to 60

gears up for Good Morning Britain’s Health Star Awards – saluting people who go out of their way to help others through ill health – Trisha is a picture of vitality and positivity.

“I’m a dress size eight and around 54 kilos,” she says proudly. “And I’ll get blasted for saying this, but when I go out with my daughters for a meal, the waiters call us ‘girls’. My kids get really embarrassed and say: ‘She’s not a girl. She’s my mother!’ But why shouldn’t I look young?

“What is 60 anyway? I’m fitter than 10 years ago. I’ll do a photoshoot and the stylist will expect me to wear M&S. People will say, ‘You’re too old for Topshop. You can’t go there.’ But why shouldn’t I? I’ve just bought some red leather vinyl trousers.

I’m not going to

LOSS be told how to dress.” Trisha, who has two daughters – Billie, 27, and Madison, 22 – now has a zest that’s in stark contrast to the dark days when cancer made her fear the worst.

She recalls: “People would say, ‘Oh you’re so brave’. But that’s not the case. You can be an utter coward and still have cancer. I heard those words and all I was thinking was ‘f***’.”

Nine years since her diagnosis she still takes a hormonal therapy drug and flies to the UK to have

check-ups with her breast surgeon in Norfolk. She adds: “I’ll probably be having tests for life. I’ll be told next year whether I can come off drugs, but it doesn’t bother me.

NOTES

“When I got my green card to move to American I had to request all my medical notes. I read them and for the first time realised I had gone through stage three cancer. I always thought I had stage two!”

Losing friends to the illness – like singer Bernie Nolan, 53, in 2013 – always hit home hard. “I knew Bernie and I just couldn’t bring myself even to read about her. It was terrifying,” Trisha says.

She also speaks with searing honesty about battling depression after being admittted to a mental health ward in Australia in the 1990s.

Trisha reveals: “My depression was so bad that the only thing tethering me to the planet was making the next breast feed for my girls.

“It was literally making that next small step and a psyhiatric nurse called Elaine made that possible.

“God help me, that woman found a way to get me connecting when I couldn’t talk. Your mind dies but you’re kept mentally alive. And I’m now living life to the max.”

Visit me at: facebook.com/jamiebreesetv email me: j.breese@sundaymirror.co.uk Jamie cannot respond to all letters personally

I knew Bernie and couldn’t bring myself even to read about her... it was terrifying TRISHA GODDARD