Late Late Show talking points, including Beverley Callard’s breast cancer news
Patrick Kielty and Beverley Callard, who revealed her breast cancer diagnosis on The Late Late Show
Moving from to Carrigstown is a life-changing event in itself, but Beverley Callard has revealed she found out she has breast cancer during her first day working on Ireland’s longest-running soap.
She said her consultant rang her 15 minutes before she was due to film her first scene in as Lily.
“I was diagnosed with breast cancer, but I'm fine. I'm absolutely fine,” she said.
“My head was a bit mashed for the first few days. It's very early stages. I travel back to the UK tomorrow, just for a couple of weeks, they're going to test lymph nodes and lymph glands and all that, but then I need an operation and some radiotherapy, and then I'm coming back to so I will be back in just a few weeks.”
Callard said she chose to reveal the news in her own words on and added her family and friends are all supporting her.
She and her husband Jon McEwan will return to Ireland after her treatment. They have bought a house in Wicklow, and Callard, who previously starred as Liz McDonald in will continue appearing as Lily in
Reflecting on when she was first offered the role a year ago, Callard said it caused her to start watching online and she became a fan.
“In the UK, it's quite difficult to get and so I was watching it on my computer. I just became addicted to and I just thought, this is fantastic. The acting is so good. The scripts are amazing.”
In 2024 Majella O’Donnell faced her biggest mental health crisis and two years on she has shared her lifelong experience with depression in hopes to help others in the same position.
O’Donnell, who is married to Donegal singer Daniel O’Donnell, said she has struggled with her mental health since her teenage years and experienced a mental health crisis when her first marriage broke down. At that time, medication helped her but she has recently revealed how, during a low point in 2024, she spent 10 weeks in a psychiatric hospital after her husband encouraged her to see her GP.
“I went to the GP, thankfully, and he said to me, have you ever considered a residential stay in a hospital? I hadn't — I just didn't think I was a candidate to go into a psychiatric hospital. I thought you had to be, you know, completely off your head. I was just dead.”
She said she was “delighted” to try “anything that can help” but found it difficult for the first few weeks.
“I didn't come out [of the hospital room] for three days, couldn't come out. I just I didn't want to see anybody. I had nothing to say. I didn't want to eat. I just wanted to crawl up into a ball and die.”
She credits St John of God’s multidisciplinary team of specialists for helping her through the difficult time but said she was surprised by how long her stay there was.
“I was in 10 weeks, I think, altogether, which surprised me, actually. I didn't think I'd be there that long at all. But it took me five weeks to even phone Daniel, five weeks to phone my own husband.
“I did send a text, and I just said, I need the time, but I will contact you as soon as I can. And then, gradually, I started to feel better. It was wonderful.”
She encouraged anyone experiencing mental health difficulties to seek help and said she hopes speaking about it becomes as normal as speaking about other illnesses, like cancer.
“Please God, in 20, 30 years time, maybe not in my lifetime, we will be talking about depression and mental health illness as if we were talking about cancer. There's no shame in it, and that's why I'm happy to talk about it.
“It's not my fault. I'll go and tell anybody, yes, I was in a psychiatric hospital. I was, and they fixed me, and that's okay. And don't ever, ever feel shameful about it. Never feel ashamed for having mental health problems, because we're human.”
writer Lisa McGee and one of its stars Saoirse-Monica Jackson described what it was like to work together on McGee’s new television show,
McGee said she always wanted to write a murder mystery.
“I always wanted to have a crack at a murder mystery. I love . I wanted to be Jessica Fletcher when I was growing up.”
She also revealed she and her husband’s first dance at their wedding was to the theme tune.
On the topic of weddings, Jackson discussed her recent nuptials in Kerry, which went viral last year, and how she incorporated nods to her husband’s Scottish heritage with a tartan dress.
“I just wanted a homage to his culture, because you know what we're like in Ireland, we have a tendency to take over,” Jackson said.
She also described the strange lengths she went to to ensure good weather on the day, not only putting out a Child of Prague (or several), but also burying sausages.
“I would have just done anything for good weather,” she said. “I think it was my younger cousin had seen on Tiktok that people had started to bury sausages. She said it was a tradition in the south. So I just went with it. But now, when I ask, when people bring it up to me, I don't think anybody else has actually buried them.”
“How many sausages did you bury?” Kielty asked.
“I know it's a waste, but it was a full 12-pack,” she replied.
