Beverley Callard could be forced to drop out of ‘I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!’
The 63-year-old actress – who has played Liz McDonald on ‘Coronation Street’ for the last 31 years – was lined up for this year’s ITV show, but after a simple procedure to fix a soft tissue tear inside her hip went wrong, she was left in "excruciating pain" and her place on the show could be in doubt.
A TV insider told The Sun newspaper’s Bizarre TV column: "Beverley was signed up for the show when it was still planned to be in Australia. She was so excited to be able to come on board. Obviously, with the surgery, she’s had complications no one could have foreseen.
"There’s no way she’s able to take part in the show and fully experience it. At best, she might have been able to do the smaller tasks. But for most of them she’d have to sit out for medical reasons, which is no fun for Bev, nor for viewers."
Bev feared she would never walk again following her disastrous surgery.
She recently said: "I have been gone because it has been the worst six months of my life. I have been in the most excruciating pain you can imagine – like teeth grinding inside my hip.
"But worse than that was the mental torture of thinking ‘is this the end for me?’ A huge part of me thought I’d never be able to return to ‘Coronation Street’ – that I wouldn’t even walk again."
The cobbles actress went to see another consultant after she was told her original doctor would not be able to complete a follow-up surgery, and she believes her first operation was risky and unnecessary.
She explained: "My [new] consultant said I had bone rubbing on bone. He said, in his opinion, I shouldn’t have had the first operation and that they rarely do this op on women because it’s unsuccessful.
"He said, ‘if you’re a 27-year-old woman, it had a 27 per cent chance of going wrong. Beverley, you’re 63. He believed it could have been sorted with injections."