Coronation Street legend Beverley Callard is battling to walk again after a routine hip operation left her fearing she would be in a wheelchair for life.

The 63-year-old star today reveals the secret agony she has been through after her sudden disappearance from the soap left millions of fans confused.

And Bev – whose character Liz McDonald had been due to make a big cobbles exit this summer after 30 years – tells how she is suing the hospital that carried out the op.

After a second opinion from another doctor, she believes the minor keyhole surgery, which led to a full hip replacement, should never have taken place.

“I have been gone because it has been the worst six months of my life,” says the actress who was left so incapacitated she even thought of having a stairlift installed at her home.

“I have been in the most excruciating pain you can imagine – like teeth grinding inside my hip.

“But worse than that was the mental torture of thinking ‘is this the end for me?

“A huge part of me thought I’d never be able to return to Coronation Street – that I wouldn’t even walk again.

“Liz is famous for mini skirts, stockings and high heels shoes. Not crutches and a mobility scooter. I thought I wouldn’t be able to do my job any more.

“That is how bad it has been. There was definite doubt over whether I would walk again.

“I was in a state of shock and pain for four months. It has been absolute hell.”

Bev went into a hospital in the North West – which we are not naming for legal reasons – for what she thought would be a routine keyhole surgery op on March 12.

She was due to return to the filming on the cobbles two weeks after the procedure.

“I’d had a niggle in my hip, in my groin on the right side,” says the star also known for a string of fitness videos she began making in the 90s.

“At the beginning of March I went to my GP as it had been going on a while.

“He said he thought I had an easily remedied soft tissue tear in inside my hip.

“I saw a consultant a few days later who did scans and said it needed a minor operation in mid-March as a day patient.

“I had the procedure and the nurse said afterwards it went really well.”

But three days later, Bev’s hip pain started to get worse – and by the time she went to have her stitches out a week later she was in agony.

It was then she claims her consultant dropped a bombshell.

“He said, ‘well Beverley, I have to tell you your operation really didn’t go very well at all’.

“He said when he got inside the hip it crumbled and I needed further operations,” she says.

“I was numb. I couldn’t take it in. I asked what next and he said it would be urgent but because of Covid-19 things were up in the air.

“I went home and over the following weeks the pain just got worse and worse despite painkillers they gave me. I couldn’t stand.

“If I moved my right leg in any direction, the pain was indescribable. It was a burning and shooting pain up and down my leg.

“My muscles would twitch, I could see them doing it. I couldn’t get comfortable seated, standing, laying. I couldn’t sleep.

“I was in tears for many days and believe me, I’m not a wuss. My dentist thinks I’m really tough, so does my GP. But this just floored me. I saw no way out.

“When I had a hysterectomy I was back in the gym 13 days later. This is the worst pain I’ve ever experienced.

“I had absolutely no control over my body – there was nothing I could do to get better. I felt helpless and so did my husband Jon.

He kept saying ‘I wish I could do something to make it go away.’ There was no let up. And it got worse and worse over the months.

“I was desperately ringing and emailing the consultant asking when my operation was going to be.

“They kept saying it should be a couple of weeks. Covid hadn’t stopped my kind of surgery as it was urgent and a big op.”

In July, Bev says she got a call from the hospital that left her in a state of panic.

“It was someone in patient care. She said they weren’t able to do my operation there because my consultant wasn’t around,” she says.

“I asked what do I do next and she said I had to go to another hospital and that when I found one they would pass my records on.

“Like a fool I started Googling hip surgery. I was at a loss. So I rang a friend who is a trauma surgeon. I told him the story and he said it set off every alarm bell in his head.

“He got me an appointment with a consultant the next day.”

The results of new scans left Bev reeling – they showed she needed major reconstructive surgery.

“My consultant said I had bone rubbing on bone,” she says. “He said, in his opinion, I shouldn’t have had the first operation and that they rarely do this op on women because it’s unsuccessful.

“He said, ‘if you’re a 27-year-old woman, it had a 27 per cent chance of going wrong. Beverley, you’re 63.

“He believed it could have been sorted with injections.”

Bev had a hip replacement on July 20 and was alone in hospital due to coronavirus restrictions. Now she’s back home in Manchester – but she says she still has lasting effects from the first surgery.

“I’ve got nerve damage, muscle damage. a lot of muscle has wasted away because I couldn’t walk. I was in hospital for four days and now I’m trying to get better,” she says.

“After the second surgery it was a different type of pain. It was sore but bearable. I actually felt a sense of relief when I came round because I knew I was on the road to getting better.

“Now I’m learning how to walk on both legs again. At one point we thought we might have to have a stairlift installed in the house. We even had a look at prices. That was a shock.

“Before all this I was a fit woman, exercising three times a week. Going up the stairs was really hard. I was worried about that at times.

“But I’ve got biceps of steel now, I’ll tell you.”

The famous mum-of-two feared her entertainment career was over – unable to do the jobs she had lined up for the next two years, including a theatre show and panto.

Last year Bev – who joined Corrie in in 1989 – announced she would be leaving the cobbles in July.

But today she reveals she’d agreed to stay on the soap for another year before saying goodbye to pint-pulling Rovers landlady Liz McDonald.

“I had the next two years of my life planned. You don’t leave a job like Corrie without plans,” she says.

“I had a whole year at Corrie and then a year of plans after that. Then it all fell by the wayside because of this. There have been days when I’ve asked myself ‘how will I earn any money?’ There have been days when I panicked.

“And there was definite doubt over whether I would walk again.”

Bev’s last Corrie scenes were aired in June and were filmed before March. Now her return to Street duty has been put on hold until next year as she waits for doctors to sign her off.

Explaining away her absence from the soap in July, Liz’s son Steve (Simon Gregson) mentioned that she’d jetted off to Spain.

Returning home just four weeks ago, Bev is now undergoing daily physiotherapy to help her walk again.

She insists she is determined to press on with a negligence claim against the first hospital and has called in lawyers.

Bev storms: “I feel like I was fobbed off and ignored by them. And the majority of 2020 has been taken away from me because of this.

“It shouldn’t have happened. I’m most definitely taking legal action. I am fighting for my future but also for what is right and to make sure this never happens to anyone else.

“I had what I thought was a routine operation but I would never have had it if I had known what the terrible consequences would be. I will do this. I shouldn’t have to, but I will.”