My God, I made it

I was looking forward to meeting Goddard. For one thing, on screen she is an impressive ringmaster (the most gargoylish of her guests - rotten of tooth and sharp of claw - have to be seen to be believed). For another, when it comes to her own life, you really could not make it up. She began her career as a trolley dolly - her words - in the Middle East, and then somehow scrambled up the TV ladder so that she became the first black anchor at ABC news in Australia.

Her first husband, an Australian would-be politician, omitted to tell her he was gay, and later died of Aids. Her second, the father of her two daughters, ran off with a researcher on her own TV show - a move that led to a four-month stay in what she now cheerfully refers to as "psych hospital" following a breakdown.

Unfortunately, talking about this stuff is tricky. It is not that Goddard doesn't care to chat: pretty much any subject is up for grabs. But combine the years she spent in therapy with her almost daily trade in semi-personal confession, and what you end up with is oddly opaque. Mostly, she sounds like a toothy motivational speaker. For one who was once clinically depressed, she is exhaustingly upbeat.

Trisha is an extremely young-looking 47-year-old ("and I've never had Botox or anything!") who lives in Norfolk. Her show is made in Norwich, where her husband, Peter Gianfrancesco, is the chief executive of the mental health charity, Mind. Neither she nor her husband gives a fig for fame. "I live - for a monied person - a bog-standard lifestyle. My best friend is a farmer's wife who runs care homes. She's a real Norfolk woman and would not take any crap. My husband is nonplussed with the celeb bit. What he hates is when the papers harp on about my exes."

Goddard was born in Hackney, to a white English father and a black Dominican mother. After school, she became a stewardess for Gulf Air, eventually saving enough money to buy a London mews house. During this time, she was offered a BBC traineeship, but turned it down on the grounds that the £10,000 a year salary was far too paltry for a girl like her.

An alternative presented itself in the form of Robert Nestdale, an Australian political hopeful, who sent flowers to her wherever she happened to be in the world. Their marriage, however, was a disaster. He used to "accidentally" lock her in the house when he went out.

She tried to commit suicide; they divorced. It was only at his funeral, four years later, that the truth about his sexuality came out. She thought he had died of leukaemia until someone suggested she might like to have an Aids test.

By this point, she was hitched to Mark Grieve, an Australian television producer. She had her doubts about this marriage, too - firmed up when a researcher suggested she do a show about "high-powered TV women whose husbands screw other girlsî. Oh dear. Having sacked both the researcher and her husband, she took an overdose, and spent four months in a psychiatric hospital. This forced her to have a rethink. She gave up her TV career, worked part-time as a mental-health counsellor, and looked after her children, Madison, 10, and Billie, 15, which is was how she met Gianfrancesco.

He sounds like a good egg. "I used to come into contact with types like Peter; I didn't stop to give them the time of day. I was going purely on looks, I preferred that they had no brains. Deep down, I knew my relationships were wrong, but I didn't have the energy to do anything about it." Still, she has no regrets. "You reprogramme your mind to accept your past. You make the pieces fit."

So, it's on with the show - a great, ravenous beast that must be fed with fresh ideas every day. "Mum died in July. I used to feel impatient if someone came on complaining that their boyfriend of a month had been unfaithful." Now, though, she says she feels happier in her soul. "I look back on last year, and think: My God, I made it.

"Once, that wouldn't have been the case. When I was having a lot of therapy, I told my shrink that I felt like I'd never fitted in. But, as he pointed out, a lot of very successful people say the same thing."

Trisha will be on Channel Five from 11 April (on weekdays at 9.35am).