Beverley Callard Cant Wait to Return to Ireland!

When soap queen Beverley Callard revealed her shock breast cancer diagnosis to Patrick Kielty just minutes into their chat on Friday night's Late Late Show, the warmth that was immediately channeled her way from all over her newly adapted country was tangible. 

After telling Patrick that she found out the daunting news just as she was about to start her first day of filming her first scenes in Fair City, she received an emotional round of applause from the stunned live-studio audience. 

On Irish social media, the well-wishes were almost as instantaneous. 

'The world is full of strong, feisty women, and I love strong, feisty women,' she had told Kielty, and Lord knows Ireland is a land of strong, feisty woman.  

A day after that revelation, she told the Irish Mail on Sunday she is gutted to have to leave Dublin and return to England for cancer treatment, but added that she said she was looking forward to moving to Ireland permanently.

Late Late Show host Patrick Kielty with Beverley Callard on set in Carrigstown recently 

The actress – who played Liz McDonald on Coronation Street for over 30 years – told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘To be honest, I don’t want to go back at all. We’ve had the best time in Ireland over the last few weeks.

‘Me and Jon just can’t wait to be back in a couple of weeks hopefully. We are just packing up our AirBnb and preparing for the ferry,’ she added.

‘I am about to make myself a Tayto cheese and onion crisp sandwich just to get myself ready for the journey!’

Ms Callard – who appears in the soap for the first time next week as Gwen’s long-lost mother Lily – travelled back to the UK yesterday to begin treatment for breast cancer.

She will have her lymph nodes tested before an operation and radiotherapy and then she will return to Dublin.

Ms Callard told the MoS: ‘I’m feeling fine, I’m feeling strong. I’m glad I’ve said it out publicly so it’s just out there for other thousands of women who are also going through it.

‘But yes, I’m feeling really strong, a little bit scared because it seems a bit more real since I’m going back to hospital next week. But I’m really full of optimism.

‘The biggest thing of all is I cannot wait to come back to Fair City to all the actors and the crew because they’ve just been amazing and I love the treadmill of being in studio, and doing one scene after another.

‘The writing has been amazing and I just can’t wait for more.’

Ms Callard revealed on Friday’s Late Late Show that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

She told host Patrick Kielty: ‘I’d had some tests just before I left the UK, and literally 15 or 20 minutes before [my first Fair City scene] I was in my dressing room at Fair City, getting ready to go on, and I was quite nervous, thinking, “I hope everybody thinks I’m alright...”

‘My consultant rang me and said, ‘You’ve got to come back to the UK’. I said, “Well, I can’t possibly, you know? I’ve just taken a new job”.

‘I said, “I’m away for a month” – and I was diagnosed with breast cancer.’

The soap legend also told the MoS how she had been to Ireland only a handful of times before taking the part and any time she had come had ‘always been for parties’, such as award shows.

‘So I’ve always been a little worse for wear, to say the least,’ she said. ‘I am known to party every now and again.’

Beverley is set to make her on-screen debut in Carrigstown on February 19, but was diagnosed with cancer just minutes before she was due to film her first Fair City scenes 

The 68-year-old actress revealed how the public’s reaction shifted during a major Coronation Street story line of the mid-1990s.

Her character Liz suffered domestic abuse at the hands of army man husband Jim, played by Charlie Lawson from Enniskillen.

Ms Callard remembered Jim’s character was a ‘typical sergeant major and bombastic and domineering’ when they started on the soap, while Liz was ‘a bit of a wimp’ – but the pair ‘decided we would play them differently’.

He would still be ‘bombastic’ but played ‘with a vulnerability’, while she ‘was going to have a great strength’.

Ms Callard said: ‘When we did that abusive storyline, at first the sympathy was with Liz, totally and utterly.

‘I got bin liners full of fan mail saying, “This is amazing,” and all the rest of it.

‘Four weeks later, the sympathy had completely shifted to Jim, and then everybody felt sorry for him. The writers did it really well, so both characters were at fault and both had good points as well.’

Ms Callard admits her response to an offer to join another soap would have been ‘absolutely not’ after she left Corrie a few years ago, because of the ‘relentless’ schedule for any soap.

But the actress, who did a year on Emmerdale before joining Coronation Street, was introduced to Fair City around a year ago and the wheels were set in motion for her arrival.

‘I love the way it’s about people’s lives. I love the writing. I love the acting. I think the lighting is good, everything. And I just thought it’s a proper kitchen-sink drama.

‘It reminds me of Coronation Street a long time ago, and that’s not an insult, that is a compliment.’

Though she’ll play it in her own accent, Lily will be ‘nothing like Liz. Her wardrobe is going to be nothing like Liz’s. If they came up with a mini skirt and Lycra, I would say, No way’.

The actress admitted she was ‘terrified’ in the first few days of shooting.

‘Everybody said to me, “You can’t possibly be terrified – you were in Corrie for 32 years”.

‘I have to tell you, every single time the red light goes on for a take, whether it be a show you’ve been in for 32 years or a show you’re doing for the first day, when they say you’re going for a take, you do that sharp intake of breath and think, “Okay, this is going to go into everybody’s living room now,” and it is scary.’