ITV presenter Trisha Goddard joined Celebrity Big Brother due to money problems and in a bid to highlight how those living with terminal cancer can still live a happy and exciting life
Trisha Goddard has revealed that she finally agreed to join the Celebrity Big Brother house due to money problems after her divorce. The much-loved TV presenter, 67, also admitted that she said the time was finally right to go on the ITV show amid her terminal cancer diagnosis as Trisha hopes to remind people to live their lives to the fullest.
Speaking on Davina McCall’s hit podcast, Begin Again, Trisha, who is living with incurable stage four breast cancer, said that her eldest daughter was the one who inspired her to finally agree to being on the show after being asked by producers ‘every single year’ to join the lineup.
The TV presenter also finally decided that her time to shine in the Celebrity Big Brother house was upon her given her money struggles. Trisha was left so broke that she was asking her children for money, and decided that was no way to live anymore.
When asked by podcast host Davina, 57, for her reasoning for finally saying yes, Trisha explained: “Let me be honest, money wise, I’ve been asked a couple of times before when, sort of, the public didn’t know, but I was really brassic. You know, divorced, having to pay people out, all that stuff. Really, I mean seriously, like borrowing money from my kids for a while and I still said there’s no way I was going to do it.”
Trisha also said that a part of her reason for joining the ITV show was to shed light on those living with cancer and for those who are struggling. After being inspired by her daughter to finally bite the bullet, Trisha said that she hopes she can inspire people to ‘actually live’ given that she has terminal cancer and still living her life to the fullest.
“This time I was asked and I said to my daughter, my older daughter, I said, ‘oh God, as usual, they’ve asked me to go do Big Brother.’ And she said, ‘mum, while you’re going through this whole cancer shenanigans, you have become passionate about the language around it. The lack of joined up services, the way the press reports it, the misinformation, you’re doing it on Instagram, you’re supporting people,’ and they support me,” Trisha said.
“My daughter said ‘you got all of these stuff you’re passionate about.’ I’ve done local press in America about it… she said, ‘mom, this is your opportunity for people to see what you’re talking about, not just the words, to actually see, what 3.4 million people, according to the Macmillan, by December, 3.4 million people in the UK alone are living with cancer.
“Six million people are living with a chronic illness now. Now they’re not all on benefits. Most of them are working. A lot of them keep it secret because they think they won’t get further work or they’ll be fired. And that’s a very real fear. But all those millions of people who could benefit from better joined up services, people using better language around them. All of those things… So I said yes.”
Of the public’s perspective on her, Trisha told Davina: “I don’t need people to like me, I’m astounded and I’m suspicious if people like me. I don’t need to have loads and loads of friends, I’m very much like my older daughter like this. I instinctively don’t trust – if I feel I don’t trust people or I just get a feeling about them at this late age in my life, I’ve learned to go with that because it’s right.”
The ITV favourite, who hosted the popular daytime chat show Trisha from 1998 to 2004, announced in February 2024 that the cancer she was diagnosed with in 2008 and had beaten, had sadly returned.
The mum-of-two who relocated to the US in 2010, devastatingly revealed the cancer ‘is not going away’ and keeping the secret was ‘becoming a burden’. Trisha received her terminal diagnosis 20 months ago and the star has secondary breast cancer – meaning the disease started in the breast and spread to another part of the body. Devastatingly, there is treatment for her cancer but there is no cure.
If you have been affected by this story, advice and support can be found at Breast Cancer Support.
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