Carrie Bickmore’s emotional appearance on ‘Anh’s Brush With Fame’

CARRIE Bickmore takes an excruciating trip down memory lane on tonight’s episode of Anh Do’s TV show.

CARRIE Bickmore breaks down in tears several times during an emotional appearance on Anh Do’s ABC show.

The Project co-host is tonight’s celebrity guest on Anh’s Brush With Fame and revisits some painful topics during the episode.

Bickmore opens up to the talented comedian and artist about the moment her first husband, Greg Lange, was diagnosed with brain cancer.

“It was about a year after we moved to Melbourne, I think I was still 21 or 22 and he was about 25,” she explains.

“He had a seizure at home and one thing led to another and they diagnosed him with a brain tumour … I didn’t know anything about brain cancer, neither did he.

“It just completely threw everything we knew, everything we had planned, everything we had thought … it just threw everything on its head. It was the start of an incredibly hard journey.”

Despite the diagnosis, Bickmore and Lange decided to get married in 2005 and welcomed a baby boy in 2007.

Carrie Bickmore with Greg Lange.

“We didn’t speak a lot about what might happen,” Bickmore tells Do with tears streaming down her face. “We were about hope and positivity.

“One of the things we chose to do was have our son, Ollie. It’s probably the greatest thing we ever did together.”

Lange lost his battle with brain cancer in 2010 but Bickmore tells Do that her son is a constant reminder of her first husband.

“This sounds so weird but often I’ll see him (Oliver) in the shower and the back of his body and his frame is just like a miniature version of Greg,” the TV star says. “They’re very, very similar. It was a great thing for both of us to have him and have that focus.”

Carrie Bickmore’s daughter Evie and her son, Ollie.

Bickmore wipes away her tears and regains her composure only to get emotional all over again when Do asks her about having to present confronting news stories on The Project.

“I know people think I cry a lot,” she says. “I don’t try and cry a lot, I think I just really feel a lot of the stories. I don’t know if that’s because of the stuff I’ve been through, but I find it hard sometimes.”

One such story that tipped Bickmore over the edge on The Project was the 2017 chemical attacks in Syria that killed more than 70 people including dozens of women and children.

As images of children caught up in the attack were shown on the Channel 10 show, Bickmore broke down and said, “I can’t watch those images”.

“The world can be a cruel place,” Bickmore says to Do about the incident.

“I remember that time a lot of people emailing in afterwards saying, ‘I had the exact same reaction when I saw it’.”

Carrie Bickmore’s emotional appearance on Anh's Brush With Fame.

In tonight’s episode of Anh’s Brush With Fame, Bickmore also opens up about her stunning Gold Logie acceptance speech which was the genesis for her Carrie’s Beanies 4 Brain Cancer charity.

“I almost decided that I wasn’t going to do it,” she says about the moving speech which encouraged people to wear a beanie the following day to raise awareness for brain cancer.

“I thought, ‘I’m just not going to be able to do this.’ So I put the beanie back under the table. And then I thought, ‘No, Carrie, just do it’.”

Since that night in 2015, the charity has gone on to raise more than $5 million for research into brain cancer.

“The generosity and the number of people who have come to me and emailed or phoned and said, ‘I have brain cancer, thank you for raising awareness.’ … I kind of just wish that he (Greg) could have seen all these messages to have realised how many people were going through a similar thing,” she says.

Carrie Bickmore at the Logies in 2015. Picture: Julie Kiriacoudis

Anh’s Brush with Fame with Carrie Bickmore airs on the ABC and iview tonight at 8pm