Traces of the disease were also found in her lymph glands, so doctors prescribed a course of chemotherapy and radiotherapy after surgery as a precaution.

Now more than halfway through the follow-up treatment, which finishes next month, a jubilant Trisha reveals that her latest tests show she has beaten the big C.

“When people say I’m battling breast cancer, I get so cross!” she says.

“I’m not actually battling it now.

"The cancer has been cut out and the chemo and radiotherapy is a mopping-up job.”

As a survivor of more personal problems in her own life than most of the 20,000 guests who’ve appeared on her show over the last decade, Trisha wasn’t going to let something as insignificant as a potentially life-threatening disease hold her back.

“My career has been all about resolving conflicts,” she explains.

“I approached cancer in the same way – by working out coping strategies for things like how to read from the autocue when the chemotherapy had given me mouth ulcers.”

Her gung-ho attitude means Trisha has barely taken a day off work.

"And when faced with losing her trademark bobbed tresses after her chemotherapy began, she took matters into her own hands by shaving and bleaching her hair before it had a chance to fall out.

“On air I wear a wig that’s the same as my last hairstyle, because I don’t want guests to focus on my hair and see me as any different – but in private, my haircut means I can now get away with much edgier fashions than I wore before,” she says.

Sure enough, Trisha looks resplendent in funky knee-high gladiator sandals for our interview at her production company’s HQ.

It’s near her home in Norwich, where she lives with husband Peter Gianfrancesco, 47, and her two daughters from her previous marriage – Billie, 18, and Madison, 14.

As well as her new hairstyle, Trisha is focusing on the positive effects her treatment is having on her body.

“I’ve lost weight, my make-up artist will tell you that my skin has never been so good and my nails are the best they’ve ever been!” she laughs.

But the presenter’s sexy new body isn’t just a product of her treatment.

Throughout her illness, she has kept up her usual routine of running, jogging and lifting weights with a personal trainer six days a week.

“There are mornings when my muscles ache from the chemo, as if I’ve been beaten with a cricket bat,” she admits.

“But when I’m out running, I tell myself: ‘Right, you’ve just got to get to that next tree, Goddard!’ And after an hour – and lots of trees – the aches have stopped.

“Exercise produces endorphins, the body’s natural painkilling hormones, and helps it to repair itself.

If you don’t use it, you lose it,” she says.

“I’ve never got hung up about my body, though,” adds Trisha, who isn’t bothered by the scarring left after the removal of lymph glands under her arms.

“I even see stretch marks as a positive thing.

"I got them creating my daughters, so I’m not going to complain about them.”

It’s not just physical scars that Trisha’s had to cope with.

She survived childhood beatings from a father, who she later learnt was not her biological parent; a sexual assault as a teenager by a stranger; the suicide of her schizophrenic sister; the death of her mother from lung cancer; a first marriage to a closet gay man; and a second marriage to a love rat, which led her to be hospitalised with depression.

“Having a mental illness is, to me, far more difficult than cancer, which at least gets you sympathy from people,” she say.

“At the height of my depression in 1994, I didn’t want to live.

"But now I’m the opposite – there’s nothing like being faced with the prospect of your mortality for making you embrace life!”

Cancer also brought her closer to Peter – her third husband and chief executive of the Norwich branch of the mental health charity MIND – and to her daughters.

“Cancer is something the whole family goes through,” she says.

“I’ve had to be even more open with my daughters because if the girls thought I was holding something back, they would come to distrust me.

I’m a typical alpha woman who always likes to have a tight grip on the reins, to put it mildly, but I’ve realised that it’s not necessary for me to have the last word on every decision.”

So, she might be relaxing in terms of control, but Trisha has absolutely no intention of slowing down.

“I hope I’ll still be running my TV show in 10 years, which would be wonderful,” she says.

“But for now, I’m careful to take everything one day at a time. My motto is: ‘Just get to the next tree!’”

The Trisha Goddard Show is on weekdays, 10.30am, Five.

Photography: lancton, capital pictures, matrix, kent news & pictures styling: katherine Doyle Hair & make-up: marco T using Dermalogica and iman Trisha wears dress, oasis; earrings, butler & wilson; shoes, schuh