TV host Trisha Goddard revealed yesterday that she has breast cancer.

The 51-year-old presenter learned the news after a routine mammogram three weeks ago.

She had immediate surgery to remove the tumour, but tests on samples of lymph nodes - glands under the arms - taken at the same time showed a trace, indicating the disease had spread.

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Blighted: Trisha Goddard in 2000 with daughters Billie, left, and Madison

It is the latest blow to a woman who has suffered personal tragedies including the suicide of her youngest sister and the break-up of two marriages.

But business associates said she was continuing with her work and was strong enough to beat the disease.

Yesterday Miss Goddard, a mother of two, was meeting her consultant to learn more about her condition and what treatment she will have.

In the coming days she will have further surgery to remove lymph nodes.

Miss Goddard, whose daytime programme Trisha is broadcast on Channel Five, was last night coming to terms with the news at the home in Norfolk she shares with her third husband, Peter Gianfrancesco, and her daughters Billie, 18, and 13-year-old Madison from her second marriage.

Mr Gianfrancesco, who works for the mental health charity Mind, said: "Trisha has to go into hospital again and we will then wait for the results of tests on the nodes that are being removed this time.

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Chat queen: Trisha Goddard told staff at her Channel 5 show of her illness today

"She may possibly need, or choose to have, chemotherapy. We are both stressed and exhausted from the worry, but are trying to deal with this one step at a time.

"We ask that everyone respects our privacy during this difficult time, allowing us to focus on supporting my wife's recovery."

Miss Goddard's business partner Malcolm Allsop said he was confident that she would beat the disease.

"When she had her last medical last year the doctor said she had the fitness level of an endurance athlete," he said.

"She is strong and will come through this. Trisha does not want to feel like a sick person. Indeed, she went straight back to work after the first operation and four days after leaving hospital was at a lunch with Madame Sarkozy and Sarah Brown.

"Trisha plans to return to the studio at the end of the month. Fortunately the shows are recorded several weeks in advance, so she is hoping that transmission will not be interrupted."

Miss Goddard first made a name for herself in Australia where she became the country's first black woman news presenter.

But although her professional career has gone from strength to strength, her private life has been blighted. Her youngest sister Linda, a schizophrenic, killed herself in 1998.

Miss Goddard's first husband, Australian politician Robert Nestdale, died of Aids. Their marriage lasted only three months, and following their break-up she learned he was gay.

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Shock: Trisha was told she had a lump three weeks ago after a routine mammogram

Her second marriage, to TV producer Mark Grieve, ended when she learned he had been having an affair while she was pregnant with their second child.

The discovery drove her to a nervous breakdown. She said she was "suicidal" and spent weeks in a psychiatric hospital. She had therapy and was on anti-depressants - but weaned herself off them before she launched her TV career in Britain in 1998.

She has been happily married to Mr Gianfrancesco for ten years.

Around 41,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. One in nine women develops the disease in their lifetime.

If the cancer is caught at the early stages, survival rates can be as high as 89 per cent.

If it has spread to the lymph nodes, that figure reduces to between 70 and 78 per cent.