While filming her new show about the state of Australia’s health, Magda’s Big National Health Check, Magda Szubanski began getting chest pains. “I’ve been dreading having a heart attack for years – everyone looks at me like I’m a walking heart attack,” the 61-year-old says now. Helpfully, the pain occurred while she was filming a segment with Dr Sandro Demaio, the CEO of VicHealth, who drove her to hospital himself. “You’re a national treasure,” he tells her. “I’m not going to risk it.”
It turned out Szubanski was fine and hadn’t had a heart attack – but then her brother did. “My brother has such a high pain threshold, you could stab him and he probably wouldn’t notice,” Szubanski says. “His symptoms were absolutely bizarre – he felt this zap in his jaw. His main artery was completely blocked. It’s really lucky he didn’t die; he had a quadruple bypass. It’s so bizarre that while I was getting my heart checked, he had the real event. And my brother’s not overweight – if you stood the two of us side by side and asked which sibling will have the heart attack, you’d pick me. So what lies beneath? We don’t know.”
