Last week, boxer Barry McGuigan and his wife Sandra appeared on Loose Women to discuss the tragic loss of their daughter.
Barry was thrust in front of a national audience last year when he competed on I’m A Celebrity… along with, among others, his compatriot Maura Higgins.
Off the back of a successful stint in the jungle, Barry called for a shakeup of the show’s rules. Maura subsequently booed hosts Ant and Dec.
Barry and Sandra’s late daughter came up during conversation in the Aussie jungle, and he talked about her again during a post-show interview. On Valentine’s Day, they addressed the tragedy as a couple.
Barry McGuigan and wife Sandra discuss late daughter on Loose Women
On February 14 – a day to be united with one’s partner – Barry and Sandra McGuigan attended the Loose Women panel.
Panelists Kaye Adams, GK Barry, Katie Piper and Nadia Sawalha asked the couple about their late daughter Danika, who died in 2019 at the age of 33.
She passed away just five weeks after getting a bowel cancer diagnosis.
Survival rates for bowel cancer and cancers generally depend on what stage they reach. Danika McGuigan was diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer.
According to Cancer Research UK, about one in 10 people with stage four bowel cancer survive for five or more years after diagnosis. In other words, the odds are slim and Danika, unfortunately, didn’t make it.
Sandra McGuigan reveals ‘worries’ over Barry venturing down under for I’m A Celebrity
During February 14’s episode of Loose Women, Nadia Sawalha asked Sandra what it was like as Barry’s wife to listen to him discussing Danika’s death on the reality TV show.
“I was worried,” she replied, “because even though we are five and a half years down the line, it’s nothing. It changes your life forever, and you try and become accustomed to it, but obviously you know, it’s changed your outlook.”
Barry – on The Weakest Link this weekend (February 22) – then went on to describe the string of tragedies that has befallen them as a couple as a “catalogue of disasters”.
“Losing my brother to suicide, and then losing my dad at 52, then losing my sister last year, and of all, losing our daughter.”
McGuigans’ ‘catalogue of disasters’ explained
Barry’s brother, Dermott McGuigan, died by suicide in 1994.
16 years later, the Belfast Telegraph reported that Barry was still coming to terms with his death.
“That’s with me every day. It was very difficult to get over – I will never get over that,” he said. “It still is emotional and I don’t go into it and dwell on it too much but it is there, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
The brothers’ father, Pat McGuigan, died after a period of illness in 1987, at the young age of 52.
And a year after Danika passed away, Barry’s eldest sister Sharon died after a 20-year battle with cancer.
How being on I’m A Celeb was like therapy for Barry McGuigan after death of daughter
“GK and everybody else [were] so great to me and they all huddled around me when I got upset that day,” Barry told the Loose Women panel, when asked if his experience of being on I’m A Celebrity was like attending therapy.
Barry’s openness when talking about his daughter’s death earned him praise from viewers.
And his fellow campmates did indeed rally around him.
Danika “Nika” McGuigan was a Northern Irish actress and the second of Barry’s four children. His only daughter.
She spent her childhood in Clones, County Monaghan, until the McGuigans relocated to Kent, England.
Tulisa Contostavlos was among those guiding – and praising – Barry through his emotional candour.
“You’re a man going through pain,” she told him. “And you’re being vulnerable about it. That takes strength. There’s no rules to grieving, Barry. You feel what you feel. It’s a reflection of your love, the extent that you’re holding onto a memory.
“That doesn’t mean that you’re weak. It means, this is how much I love my daughter, and I’m grieving.”
Watch Barry and Sandra on Loose Women below.
Barry’s on The Weakest Link tonight (February 22) at 7.40pm om BBC One.
Read more: I’m A Celebrity star Barry McGuigan’s son Shane is rushed to hospital: ‘One thing after another’
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