Coro Battler Beverley Learns To Walk Again

The fitness fanatic has been in agony since undergoing hip surgery that failed miserably

- Judy Kean

Onscreen, the disappearance of her character Liz McDonald from Coronation Street’s cobbles has been blamed on the former barmaid sitting out the pandemic in Spain with her son Andy.

But in real life, actress Beverley Callard has been a no-show thanks to suffering a health crisis that she feared would leave her unable to ever walk again.

The 63-year-old hurt her hip last year while touring with the stage show Thunder Girls, about an eighties’ girl band that gets back together after 30 years.

In March, she went to her GP with a “niggle” in her right hip and groin, and was told it was probably a soft-tissue tear in her hip that could be easily fixed.

“I saw a consultant a few days later, who did a scan and said it needed a minor operation in mid-March, as a day patient,” tells Beverley. “I had the procedure and the nurse said it went really well.”

But three days later, the actress began to suffer intense pain, and by the time she returned to see the consultant, she was in agony. He then told her that actually, the operation hadn’t gone well at all.

“He said when he got inside the hip, it crumbled, and I needed further operations. “I went numb,” Beverley recalls. “I couldn’t take it in.”

She was told the scheduling of the operation to repair her hip was “up in the air” because of the pandemic, and spent months in excruciating pain, waiting to hear when she could have the surgery.