Trisha Goddard has told how she suffered a tough childhood facing racism and being called a “b*****d child” after her dad realised he was not her biological father. TV host Trisha, 67, was brought up by mum Agnes, who was born in Dominica, and dad Peter from Suffolk, who met as trainee nurses.
But speaking to Davina McCall on her Begin Again podcast, Trisha told how she noticed physical differences when compared to her sisters. Trisha said: “Mum came over(from Dominica), did nursing training. And dad, as I call him, was another student. I later discovered they split up for a while.
“And then mum came back to him and said, ‘I’m pregnant. What are you going to do about it?’ So they got married. She had the baby, apparently. And I found out later from a friend – mum’s friend came, looked at me and said ‘well it’s not Peter’s isn’t it? Are you going to tell him?’
“And my mum said ‘Well, I suppose not.’ And my dad said that he kept asking her and he said, ‘don’t make me ashamed if I have to have a blood test.’”
Referring to her dad and his realisation he was not her father, Trisha added: “I loved him up to a point. When I stopped, Davina, I never stopped caring about him. Because it was physical manipulation. And then it was mental manipulation. But he’s complicated… He wasn’t a bad person. He put a roof over my head.
“When he used to just lose his temper, he’d always call me that ‘bastard child, bastard child.’”
In 2021 Trisha spoke on ITV ’s Life Stories about this issue. At the time she said her mother never admitted her dad Peter was not her biological father – leaving her still searching for family members decades later.
In an emotional interview, Trisha also said she thought “something is different” from the age of six and feels betrayed by her late mother Agnes.
Speaking to Davina McCall just days before she went into the Big Brother house for the Begin Again podcast. Trisha also revealed other problems she had growing up in Norfolk including extreme racism at school.
She said: “As we walk up to school, every day, one kid would go ‘they’re coming’, and they’d then all go ‘blackie, blackie, blackie, blackie’, all the kids. Open the school gate, and they’d smack us like this [gestures] ‘blackie, blackie.’”
She added: “One time I was looking around for a table and I saw a space. Anyway, I went towards this table, got my school dinner. And a boy came and hit my tray and the food went everywhere. And they were like, ‘blackie, blackie.’
“I went back and I said… ‘they knocked my tray down, can I have some more food?’ And this dinner lady looked at me and she said, ‘you’ve had.’ And everyone laughed.
“So I ran outside, burst into tears. I’m sitting on the step. I remember it like it was yesterday – crying and crying and crying. And a teacher came and sat down next to me… and said, ‘you’ve got to toughen up. You got to toughen up. You got to toughen up. I know it’s upsetting. You got to toughen up.
“‘You see, people in this country don’t want you here and you’re going to get this all your life because they don’t want coloured people. So you’ve got to – this is how it’s going to be. So you can’t cry every time it happens.’ You know, basically telling me that that’s okay, that’s my life, you’ve got to suck it up and grow a pair because of that.”
Trisha also told Davina she has gone on Celebrity Big Brother to raise awareness about cancer and providing better care and facilities for people.
She is living with incurable stage four breast cancer but hates the use of the word ‘terminal’ around cancer and instead says people should say ‘life limiting’.
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