Gloria Hunniford was devastated when daughter died after coming home from Australia

Gloria’s daughter Caron Keating, who was also a successful TV presenter, passed away at her mum’s home in Kent in 2004 after a seven-year long battle with cancer

Gloria Hunniford said the death of her daughter Caron after she came home from Australia was “just so sad”.

Broadcaster Caron Keating died from breast cancer aged 41 in 2004, after a courageous seven-year battle with the disease.

Caron left behind her husband Russ and their two young sons, Charlie and Gabriel.

Gloria said the death of her daughter was extremely heartbreaking as she had just returned home to the UK after time spent in Australia.

Speaking about how Caron followed in her mother’s footsteps, Gloria said: “I always thought that she would go into television, simply because her dad worked in TV, and I was in TV.

“She wanted to be a researcher. She applied for a job and didn’t get it.

“And then unfortunately, a boy who was helping to present a youth programme in BBC Belfast died in a car crash and they needed somebody overnight. They sent for Karen.

“While she was doing that she was asked to audition for Blue Peter and got the job.”

Caron’s cancer diagnosis came as a huge shock to her and her loved ones.

“Caron’s diagnosis took place – the kids were young, obviously – and she at one point had this lump in her breast and everybody, including her doctor, thought it was a milk lump of some sort,” Gloria told Brendan Courtney on RTÉ’s Keys To My Life.

“Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

“The doctors gave her a year and half at that point, which we never told her, because she was adamant. She used to say to doctors, ‘Don’t give me a prognosis, tell me what I have to do, tell me what I have to take, I’ll take it’.

“She was prepared to do anything to live for her boys.”

Caron lived with cancer for seven years. Her final three years were spent between Australia and Switzerland to seek treatment, before she returned to her mum’s home in Kent in 2004.

Gloria went on: “There was so much excitement about Karen and Russ coming home, that they wouldn’t be 12,000 miles away. I can’t tell you how exciting that was.

“They arrived home and she sat at the table and had soup. She was very tired after the journey.

“The thrill of saying goodbye to her, knowing I was going to see her again in the morning was palpable. I couldn’t believe she was going to be in the house.

“But she passed at a quarter past six that evening. It was terrible. Who would have thought that arriving here at twenty past one, that she would die at quarter past six that night.

“It was just so sad. Every time on her anniversary, wherever we are in the world, we always raise a glass at quarter past six.”

Elsewhere in the show, Gloria opened up about the passing of her husband Stephen Way, who died last August.

She explained how work helped her navigate her grief.

The Loose Women star told Brendan: “It was a very good relationship. I was very, very sad to lose him of course some months back.

“When Stephen was ill for the best part of a year and a half, I had to try and get on with whatever life was going to be.

“Work wouldn’t be for everybody, but I’ve worked since I was 7.

“t takes time and everybody grieves at different stages. I’ve been lucky that I’ve had my work.

“As I say, some people wouldn’t want to be working at my age, but I want to work.”

Elsewhere in the episode, Gloria spoke about the breakdown of her marriage to first husband Don Keating, as her broadcasting career took off in London but he wanted to move back to their native Northern Ireland.

She said: “There is an old saying that if a marriage is strong enough it’ll never break up, but I don’t believe that separations work.

“Don at the time was a producer and director, and was asked to go to South Africa for six months to work on a series there. So we were apart, I went to London, he went to South Africa.

“In the end when Don came back to London, he worked in the telly centre for a while, but he hated London, he hated the travelling and he wanted to go back to Northern Ireland to live.

“I don’t blame him for wanting that, for hating London, but I happened to be loving it. So, in a way, our lives just went like that.”

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