under the microscope

Sky TV presenter Kay Burley, 54, answers our health quiz

CAN YOU RUN UP STAIRS?

GENERALLY I’m quite fit. I run in the park twice a week for up to an hour with my springer spaniel and sometimes my 22-year-old son, Alexander. He does it just to humour me and then sprints off before looping back to make sure I haven’t expired.

GET YOUR FIVE A DAY?

YES, I tend to eat healthily during the week because I have to be alert for whatever the news throws at me. I don’t drink coffee — it gives me a stomach ache. To keep my energy levels up I make lots of healthy snack boxes filled with nuts, dried fruit and seeds.

ANY FAMILY AILMENTS?

MY DAD died from a heart attack when he was 66. He was a smoker. And there’s a long line of breast cancer on my mother’s side. My grandmother died when she was 40, my aunt had it and my mum died from it in 1993. Mum was given the all-clear after a course of treatment and being cancer-free for five years, but it came back unexpectedly when she was 58 and she died six weeks later. I don’t have the faulty BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene, but I’ve been told I’m still in the high-risk category. So I have an annual ultrasound, MRI and mammogram.

ANY VICES?

IF I need a kick during the day then I’ll have a Diet Coke, even though I know it’s bad for me. I kid myself and say that calories only count as half on a Saturday, so that’s when I enjoy indulgences, such as ice-cream.

COPE WELL WITH PAIN?

I DON’T do pain. I broke a rib while competing in Dancing On Ice in 2007 and I’d never known pain like it, other than childbirth. The first thing medics did was give me ibrupofen. Wonderful stuff! I HAD skin cancer when I was four. My mother became alarmed when a mole on my back grew rapidly — it turned out to be a malignant melanoma. I was in and out of hospital for a year and had three operations. Fifty years on I’ve still got a mark of Zorro where it was.

ALTERNATIVE REMEDIES?

I HAVE acupuncture for a bad shoulder as a result of Dancing on Ice. I’m usually bad with needles — I’ve passed out having inoculations. But with acupuncture, I can’t see the needles going in so it’s fine.

WOULD YOU EVER HAVE PLASTIC SURGERY?

I GOT a facelift when I was 50 and I had my eyes done for my 40th. I’m not going to allow Mother Nature to mug me off any sooner than she has to. It’s not for everybody, but for me it was the right thing to do.

ANY PHOBIAS?

NEEDLES and water. I fell off a diving platform when I was ten and was rescued by the lifeguard. If I go under water now, the noise still takes me back to that moment.

LIKE TO LIVE FOR EVER?

DEPENDS who I was living for ever with.