I Am Davina McCall...
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Davina McCall is one of our best-loved TV presenters. Following a stint at MTV, she defected to Channel 4 and became known for playing cupid to unsuspecting passers by in Streetmate. In 2000, a new reality TV phenomena began as Big Brother burst onto our screens.
Davina has remained at helm throughout its ups, downs and controversies ever since, and even played a zombie version of herself recently in the Big Brother-oriented drama ‘Dead Set’.
She spoke to Heat’s Lucie Cave…
Heat: Who would you say is the most influential person in your life?
Davina: This is a multi-layered question for me, because there have been so many, starting with my grandmother,r who I lived with for ten years - she’s a like a matriarchal force in our family. She’s really important to all of us and she’s really lovely. She’s not like the mother in The Sopranos. She’s the glue. Obviously now, Matthew and my kids are a huge part of my life.
h: You lived with your grandparents when your mum and dad split up – how was that?
D: I was nearly four and I don’t really remember them being together because of that. My dad used to come and see me every weekend, so I did have lots of contact with him, and I saw mum in the holidays. I was thinking the other day, that a lot of children end up in my position, only seeing their dad at weekends. My grandparents spoilt me rotten but were also strict and taught me morals and manners. Talking about her makes me cry – she’s been so there for me at difficult times – we went through the hardest part of my life [together], leaving my mum.
h: Let’s talk a little bit about growing up. So you lived with your grandparents and your parents separated; that must’ve been a difficult time for you…
D: My feeling is that if people are going to get divorced, do it before the kids are four, because I imagine a divorce is much more harrowing for children that can remember being asked to choose which home or having to move from house to house. I was living with my grandmother; my dad saw me at weekends and I saw my mum in the holidays; that’s all I ever knew. The harrowing thing was leaving my mum and thinking she was going to come back and then realising she wasn’t and I was going to be staying with Pippy for ever. That’s hard. But kids are very resilient and with the support of Pippy, and that’s why she meant so much.
h: Pippy?
D: Yep, Pippy and Mickey! My grandfather was stoically brilliant as well.
h: You later moved in with your dad and step mum – was that difficult at all?
D: I loved it! I went from being in the country to being in London; I was twelve and a half, which was the perfect age to go there. Suddenly I had all this freedom, I could get on a bus and not rely on people to ferry me around. It was an explosion of independence - growing up and puberty all at the same time.
h: Is there a song that reminds you of the time you first moved to London and had all that freedom?
D: It’s really old! There were three records that my family used to play on those big cassettes – Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, Saturday Night Fever and Your Kiss Is Sweet by Syreeta, who was Stevie Wonder’s wife. It’s really brilliant.
h: Let’s talk a bit about your relationship with your mum, how did being apart from her so much affect you when you were growing up?
D: I think everybody agreed that me just seeing her in the holidays was the best arrangement. I think if it had been an acrimonious divorce, with people bitching behind each other’s backs, I would have been quite torn, but it wasn’t like that, so I was quite lucky. I used to stay with her parents in Paris, and either my mum was living there or was with her boyfriend and would come and see me most days. The upside of that was that my big sister was there – my mum had her when she was 16. Everyone who meets Caroline says they love her.
I’ve got another amazing little sister too - she’s called Millie and is a mini me – 13 years younger, so there’s huge gaps between us.
The thing that a lot of people get very wrong in interviews is that my mum did really love me – she just wasn’t brilliant at being a mum, But she was so young when she had me – she was in her early twenties. She was hugely beautiful.
h: Did you idolise her?
D: Yes I did, although it was quite depressing because she’d borrow my clothes and look better in them than me. Not fair! There were good memories though. The thing is, anybody who’s lived with an alcoholic will tell you that you get very good at sensing an atmosphere in a room. So I would know how to play it really quick; when I saw my mum I would quickly be able to tell whether she was going to be happy drunk, sad drunk, angry drunk and I would adapt my behaviour to that. That’s not a great thing to have to grow up doing, but you learn a skill and now if I see a really drunk person I can handle it. I’m not frightened of drunk people; you know how some people can be frightened on a night out? I can handle it. I hate it when people portray me as a victim because I’m not – I see it that everything that’s happened to me has made me miles stronger. I always try and see the upside in every bad situation.
h: Was there any music you used to listen to when you were in France?
D: There was quite a lot of Frank Zappa going down! It’s very rude, a bit like Tenacious D for the 70s – I love Tenacious D! Alan Parsons Project, loads of Supertramp and lots of Christopher Cross. Ride Like the Wind – that’s a bit of a guilty pleasure!
h: Is there a song that really reminds you of your mum?
D: Yes, there was a New Year’s Eve – I was about 12 or 13 – she was with her boyfriend Michel, who she’d been with for quite a long time. He was really fun and him and his brother would have rip-roaring parties. New Year’s Eve was a fancy dress party and I have this very strong memory of Da Ya Think I’m Sexy and my mum would do this boxing dance, where she’d punch the air. Literally, you could see all these guys melting; men would stare at her and I would sit in a corner and think ‘wow.’ She was just sex on a stick!
h: Your mum passed away in 2008 and you hadn’t had any contact with her for quite a few years, how was that?
D: The last time I’d seen her was at my wedding, which had been brilliant and even then it had been a bit of a worry, as Matthew had said, “Is she going to get drunk?”, but it was lovely. We’d gone to a 12 step fellowship meeting together, which was amazing, because we both cried.
I had never spoken about going to these meetings – even though the press knew I’d had a drink and drug problem – because there’s a danger that if talk about it and then relapse, everyone is going to think it doesn’t work. It’s a dangerous game to play to get on your high horse and go, “Look at me! I’m going to meetings!” So I just thought I’d say that I did it through therapy, so people never ask me anymore; people just assumed that I was just going therapy.
But 6 months after the wedding, there was a headline in the Mirror saying, “Mummy I Need a Meeting”. She’d sold a story, even after we’d built all those bridges. She’d given them our honeymoon snaps and everything. I mean, I’m public and I’ll tell you everything, but there’s a side of me that’s quite private. So, for example, I didn’t invite anybody to our wedding, and even though the press turned up, I said to them, “You’re very welcome to have a picture of us after we’ve just got married, but then please can you leave us to have a private wedding?” They were really nice about it; they got their picture of the dress, of Matthew and I all loved up, and then they left us all alone – it was perfect.
I was floored – I did stay in contact with her, even though my big sister didn’t speak to her from then on.
h: What did you say to her after it came out?
D: I phoned her up in tears and said, “Mum, you are sober and you know that this is an anonymous fellowship. You have broken my anonymity when no one else has – I’ve sat there with heroin addicts and they didn’t say anything! And you did. Why did you do that?” She said she didn’t get paid, but then I found out she did… there was just a lot of lies. I know that she didn’t do it out of malice, but I found it quite hard to trust her. Then she started asking for money for medical treatment so I sent her money, and then she said people were offering her money for stories so I had to send her more money. I felt a bit used and angry – there were so many different feelings going on. I sent her photos of the children but then part of me was nervous that she might send them to a paper… the trust had gone. And it’s really, really, really hard to get trust back once it’s gone.
I don’t think I ever stopped loving my mum because every time she did something that hurt it was like a dagger going through my heart, so I know I still loved her. But I was so angry and trying to come to terms with the fact that I didn’t have one of those mums who gave you a hot chocolate and a cuddle when you were sad. Towards the end, I would have probably flown out there on my own to try and make some kind of peace, but for whatever reason I didn’t. I then got a couple more financial demands off her. She’d send a lovely letter or do something nice, then ask me for money.
Her final piece was in the Mail. I think at that point she might have relapsed. She sent me a fax which said, “Can you get this journalist off my back, he’s bothering me?” – which was an excuse because I found out later that her first question to him had been, “How much money will I get?” – that was the final nail in the coffin really. They contacted me when she was very sick and might have to go into a hospice to ask whether I could cover the hospice bills. I said, “Look, of course I’ll cover them”, but I was quite angry. I had an argument with her son-in-law on the phone and then she died, and he said, “She’s died, we don’t need to argue anymore.”
h: How did it affect you? Did it hit you straight away?
D: We both cried a lot [my big sister and I] and we both said we were quite relieved in a sense of the burden of seeking something in my mum that she couldn’t be. She couldn’t fill what I wanted her to be. I kept thinking it was going to be different, that she’d say, “I’m sorry for everything.” I now realise now that she’s gone, and that my mum could never apologise – she didn’t have it in her. And she did say in her letters that she wasn’t well; that she’d been anorexic and an addict herself and she had a lot of stuff to deal with. But I’m a lot more forgiving of her now because she’s not hurting me anymore.
h: Any songs that comforted you?
D: Angel by Sarah McLaughlan - that was played at our wedding too
h: What were you like as a teenager? You were quite studious!
D: Don’t get too excited, I went to a very good school but I think I was learning by osmosis. I got all my ‘O’ Levels bar one – physics – which I didn’t and still don’t understand. I was normal-brightness but I loved going out and socialising, and meeting people. Music shaped my life – before I picked up drugs or alcohol it was music that was a mood-altering drug. Music could make me feel happy, make me feel sad. It was the soundtrack of my life. Whenever I was feeling sad, there was music, or an event, there would always be a song for it. Music enabled me to feel feelings that others couldn’t.
h: What was a happy track for you?
D: Without a doubt, any Earth, Wind and Fire track - September, Boogie Wonderland… or Shalimar, - Take That To The Bank, Night To Remember.
h: You mentioned that music helped you through heartache and romances. Was there one big romance you had at school that remember?
D: There was my first love, who will remain nameless because it’s very embarrassing for him. It was a boy who I had the hugest crush on but he just wasn’t interested. We were both 13 or 14, and at one point we did kiss, it was lovely. I considered him to be my boyfriend but he slept with another girl because she would have sex with him and I wouldn’t. It was really sad. I’m still friends with him now though, so I have forgiven him!
h: Is there a song that reminds you of him?
D: It’s a song called It’s Over by ELO – another guilty pleasure!
h: You’ve got three kids - Holly, Tilly and Chester – is there any music that you associate with them?
D: God, Hannah Montana, Jonas Brothers…
h: I’m meeting them today!
D: Oh my gosh, shut up! Are you kidding me? Holly wanted to be invited to their premiere and I said no, because she’s too young. If she goes now, what has she got to look forward to? She’s 7!
h: Let’s talk about your husband. You’ve been together 10 years, haven’t you?
D: We’ve been together for 11 years and married for 9. Amazing, isn’t it? That’s like 100 years in showbiz – it’s like dog years - where the marriage lasts a third of the time of anybody else’s!
h: Do you feel there’s any pressure on you, or is it because you keep your private life private?
D: I think so. Matthew is allergic to celebrity; he doesn’t give me a hard time about it though. He would NEVER do a documentary on our lives. He would hate it.
h: But weirdly, he was a presenter…
D: Yeah, and he hated it! He did it for about a year on Pet Rescue and he did a holiday programme as well. People still ask him if he’s a vet – it was ten years ago he did that programme!
h: Is there a song that reminds you of him?
D: Matthew is quite hippy and is really into his trance - he exercises to trance, he cycles to trance...but he’s also into folk music – he loves K. T. Tunstall.
h: Can we talk a bit about Big Brother? It’s in its tenth year - is there any song that reminds you about the very first one you did, or any of them, for that matter?
D: There are two songs I really love. They are both slow songs that we used to play towards the end of the show, when we play all the best bits, and they both make me cry. You look at it and think, “God, that was an amazing series.” I thought the best bits of last year were particularly amazing, and they were played to Kings Of Leon - Revelry. And then there’s Cars by Snow Patrol, which was from the year before.
h: Davina, thank you very much for joining me on This Is Who I Am with Orange.
D: Or ‘This Is Who I Was’!
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