\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>t all starts with the coil. Of course it does. This is Davina, and Davina McCall doesn\u2019t do personal by halves. \u201cI loved the coil, but people always used to go, \u2018I\u2019m not getting the coil, ugh.\u2019 <\/em>I always wondered why it wasn\u2019t more popular.\u201d So, it was June 2023 and McCall was getting her preferred method of contraception replaced \u2013 on TV, naturally, for a documentary. \u201cI asked my children\u2019s permission. \u2018Can Mummy get her coil refitted on television?\u2019 They all rolled their eyes, like: \u2018God! Here she goes again.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Post-fitting, her friend Dame Lesley Regan, a gynaecologist, suggested that McCall have a health screening at the state-of-the-art women\u2019s health clinic where she worked, in exchange for a talk she would give on menopause. To be honest, McCall says, she thought the idea ridiculous. \u201cI was like: \u2018Honestly, I don\u2019t need that. I\u2019m the healthiest woman you\u2019ve ever met. I don\u2019t go to the doctor, I have a good immune system, I eat well.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s 10 months now since McCall had her brain tumour removed. Although benign, the colloid cyst was huge. If left untreated, it could have eventually killed her. The TV presenter says she\u2019s still trying to process everything: how fluky it was that it was spotted; what could have happened if it hadn\u2019t been, or if she had refused the op (she almost did); and how her brain has been changed.<\/p>\n We meet at a studio in London where she\u2019s having her photo taken. She arrives wearing a candy floss-coloured shirt, black skort and Ibiza tan. She looks ludicrously fit, like she could knock off a triathlon before breakfast. Today, at 57, McCall\u2019s addiction is health and fitness. It used to be booze and heroin.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018I looked at my life and thought: have I done everything I want to do? And I thought: yeah, I have.\u2019 Dress: Claire Mischevani. Earrings: Giovanni Raspini<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ve never met McCall before, but within seconds I feel I\u2019ve known her for life. And in a way I have. McCall is one of the few celebrities whose public persona is pretty much the same as their private one. She grabs my hand, and leads me to the sofa where we\u2019re going to talk. I feel like a contestant on Big Brother, which she presented for 10 years and 16 series (including the celebrity version). I half expect her to tell me that we\u2019re live on Channel 4, so please don\u2019t swear. In fact, this is probably the biggest difference between TV and real versions. The real McCall swears like a drunken nun.<\/p>\n She stares at my bag disbelievingly, as I pull out a second recorder. \u201cFucking hell, you taping me in stereo?\u201d McCall is a great talker. You can turn your two recorders on and pop out for a couple of hours and she\u2019s sure to have filled them with spellbinding if scatological stories. Her tales (of which there are many) invariably have tangents. And the tangents usually have their own tangents. So, somehow, she segues from the coil to The Lowdown (\u201cIt\u2019s this amazing website, like a TripAdvisor for your vagina\u201d), to the respect she has for her children\u2019s privacy (\u201cI\u2019ve never posted any pictures of my son. He didn\u2019t choose to be famous; I did\u201d), her desire to shock as a teenage girl, Donny Osmond, her years at MTV, before getting back to the coil (around an hour later) to explain how it led to her diagnosis.<\/p>\n McCall was working as a judge on the TV series The Masked Singer when she got her diagnosis. She was told only about three people in a million get a colloid cyst, a non-cancerous fluid-filled sac that typically develops in the brain\u2019s third ventricle. She was shocked, but the word she heard loudest was \u201cbenign\u201d. In that case, she told herself, she didn\u2019t have to do anything about it. She agreed to speak to a couple of brain surgeons, but her starting point was that they wouldn\u2019t be operating on her. \u201cI spoke to an amazing surgeon in America and said I need an honest opinion on whether I should have this operation. She said, \u2018Are you sure you\u2019re not symptomatic?\u2019, and I said yes. And she said: \u2018Well, I\u2019m really surprised because looking at your scans it looks like you should be.\u2019\u201d Because it was so big? \u201cYeah! D\u2019you want me to show you?\u201d Before I\u2019ve got time to answer, she\u2019s got her smartphone out and I\u2019m staring at a white, jelly-like blob on her brain. \u201cA big colloid cyst is 10mm or more, and mine was 14mm,\u201d she says proudly. \u201cThis is Jeffrey.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEh?\u201d I say.<\/p>\n <\/span>McCall after her surgery in November 2024.<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of Davina McCall\/Eroteme<\/p>\n \u201cJeffrey is what I call it.\u201d Why? \u201cBecause I don\u2019t know anyone called Jeffrey, so I could say \u2018Fuck Jeffrey\u2019 without hurting anyone\u2019s feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n How did she react when she was told she should have surgery? \u201cI burst into tears.\u201d She had left the studio to take the call and was pacing around the courtyard. \u201cI was relieved and frightened. So the fear of it being a dead cert that I\u2019m going to get it taken out, and then the relief of \u2018Thank fuck, I\u2019m going to get it taken out\u2019 came at the same time. Nobody at The Masked Singer knew. I pull myself together, walk back in to go towards my dressing room and see this guy called Joe from ITV. And he goes: \u2018Hey, hi, how are you doing?\u2019 And I burst into tears, and he gives me a hug and asks what\u2019s going on. I said: \u2018I\u2019ve just found out I\u2019ve got a brain tumour and I need to get it operated on and I feel good and terrible all at the same time.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n This was last October. A month later, she had the operation. McCall didn\u2019t tell anybody on the show itself what was happening. \u201cI pretended to everybody on the judging panel I was sick. And then I actually put on a costume and performed.\u201d (She sang Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and This Christmas on The Masked Singer Christmas Special.) Why? \u201cIt was quite weird. I wasn\u2019t thinking this in a dramatic way, but I did think: if I don\u2019t make it, this will be amazing for my kids to watch. I know that sounds a bit dark \u2026\u201d She comes to a stop.<\/p>\n Just as her emotions are about to get the better of her, she cheers herself up by telling me exactly<\/em> what the operating team did to her brain. \u201cThey cut like a hairband into my head, peeled the front of my head down, then went through the two halves of my brain, so it looked like that.\u201d She shows me a photo of the hairband scar. Is the scar still there? \u201cMy partner, Michael, very sweetly said, \u2018You\u2019ve just got a little white patch\u2019, so we sprayed some root spray, but this is all new hair growing back.\u201d Her hair is a magnificent auburn. Is it her natural colour? She laughs. \u201cNo, I\u2019m grey. I coloured my hair two nights ago. I\u2019m not ready to go grey yet.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael and I were really good friends because we were hairdresser and client. I told him all of my secrets<\/p>\n McCall feels she has emerged from her experience transformed. \u201cThe best thing to come out of it is not being frightened of death any more.\u201d How scared was she? \u201cI wasn\u2019t terrified of dying, but I didn\u2019t want to die. I love life, love living, and definitely wanted to be around for my kids while they were young. I think if I\u2019d got ill when my kids were little it would have been very different, but I looked at my three kids and, although I didn\u2019t want to leave them, I did think: you\u2019d all be OK if I did. That\u2019s a nice feeling. Then I looked at my life and thought: have I done everything I want to do? And I thought: yeah, I have. I\u2019ve lived a really good life. I\u2019ve really enjoyed my life. I\u2019ve loved, and I\u2019ve been loved.\u201d<\/p>\n After the diagnosis, she started a podcast called Begin Again. \u201cThe whole idea behind it is helping people get to a point in their lives where they feel they can die happy. It\u2019s about doing everything in your life you want to do, and how do you begin again to do that, so that you can die happy; so you can go, I\u2019ve lived a life I\u2019m proud of, or that I wanted to live.\u201d<\/p>\n What was she totting up when she did the inventory of her life? \u201cMy kids. Would they be OK without me? I always thought my job is to teach them to fly away and never look back, even though you want them to look back sometimes. I don\u2019t want to have kids who are too afraid to leave me. I guess the fact that one lives in Manchester, one lives in Australia, and the other one didn\u2019t come on holiday with us because he was in Split means I\u2019ve done a good job. They\u2019re independent, happy kids.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018I don\u2019t look at other people. I like being monogamous.\u2019 Dress: Lanvin. Earrings and chunky bangle: Dinosaur Designs. Other bangle: Davina\u2019s own<\/span><\/p>\n They had a very different childhood from your own? \u201cDefinitely. They had a solid childhood. I was with their dad for 18 years. We were together, they were under one roof, they had food on the table.\u201d McCall split up from her second husband and the father of her children, Matthew Robertson, in 2017. She got together with the hairdresser Michael Douglas two years later. Douglas has done McCall\u2019s hair for more than 20 years, and the two families were friends. Often he would bring his two children around to her house when he was doing her hair.<\/p>\n She was as surprised as anybody when they got together. I assumed it evolved into a relationship, but she says not. \u201cIt was more of a coup de foudre. A lightning bolt. I probably don\u2019t want to talk about this because I have to think about Matthew. Michael and I were really good friends because we were hairdresser and client. I told him all of my secrets, about how I was feeling, and he was a brilliant sounding board. He would share his experiences; I would share my experiences. We would help each other navigate things. And he was in love with his wife and I was in love with my husband, so it was us trying to help each other through our lives. That\u2019s what\u2019s so mad about it. And then coup de foudre. Mad<\/em>. Like I\u2019d put on a different pair of glasses.\u201d<\/p>\n She says she had to make sure she was over Robertson before thinking about a new relationship. \u201cIf I\u2019m with somebody I\u2019m with them. I don\u2019t look at other people. I like being monogamous.\u201d<\/p>\n McCall\u2019s childhood was famously unsolid \u2013 at least on her maternal side. Her French mother, Florence, was a chaotic alcoholic who also dabbled in drugs, a glamorous socialite who never quite grew up and who died in 2008. When McCall was 13, Florence took her clubbing in \u00cele de R\u00e9 along with her 19-year-old sister. \u201cI remember my mum left me and my sis to go and get some weed or something, and being a bit frightened then. I was like: \u2018Oh I\u2019m so coool.<\/em>\u2019 Then when my mum left, I\u2019m: \u2018Oh my God, I\u2019m so young, what am I doing in this place?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n I left my boyfriend because I thought it was his fault I was taking drugs. Maybe it was my fault he was taking them<\/p>\n Her parents split up when she was three. Florence returned to France, and young Davina went to live with her paternal grandparents in Surrey. At 13 she moved in with her father, Andrew, a marketing and advertising executive who died in 2022, and her stepmother, Gaby, in London. She adored them (and is still exceptionally close to Gaby) but it was the absent Florence who was the defining influence of her childhood. \u201cI was very loved. My dad and my granny and my stepmum loved me a lot. But it was my mother\u2019s love that I spent my childhood seeking. I had it all there, and the thing I wanted was the thing I couldn\u2019t have. I was just trying to fill this hole.\u201d<\/p>\n By her mid-teens, she had become a rock chick \u2013 cool, loud, impossible to ignore. She was having a great time of it. \u201cWhen I got to 18 or 19 I was an extreme extrovert. Outrageous outfits, always with people, dancing, chat, loved it.\u201d She was running her own club nights, frequently on the lash, and developed a serious drug problem. \u201cI was going down a muddy route of heroin and cocaine, and I was a mess.\u201d How muddy a mess was she? \u201cI don\u2019t want to underplay me taking heroin. The fact I wasn\u2019t injecting doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s safe to take heroin. It really fucked up my life. My life was falling apart. I left my boyfriend because I thought it was his fault I was taking drugs. It wasn\u2019t. I got worse when I left him. Maybe it was my fault he was taking them.\u201d<\/p>\n She says she was such a contradictory shambles \u2013 conscientious and wasted, ecstatic and miserable, life of the party and lonely as hell, permissive and puritanical. \u201cI was half nun, half wild child. I was half really good girl: so compliant, swotty, good morals and manners, and full of love. And then half maniac.\u201d She didn\u2019t have a clue what she wanted to do with her life. Then, when she was 19, MTV got in touch with a bunch of notable clubbers, including her, to see if they could help with the launch of MTV Europe. Their job was to entertain celebrities attending the launch on the journey from London to Amsterdam, where the party was held, and throughout the night. \u201cAt the end of that night I was like: \u2018Oh my God. I\u2019ve found my calling<\/em>. I have to work for MTV!<\/em>\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>With her partner Michael Douglas and daughter Holly Robertson, after being made an MBE in January 2024.<\/span> Photograph: WPA\/Getty Images<\/p>\n She\u2019s screaming with enthusiasm, Davina-style. What was so good about it? \u201cIt was just so mad. Everyone who worked at MTV was under 25. All the biggest bands of the era were on this plane \u2013 Duran Duran, Sigue Sigue Sputnik. I think Donny Osmond was on the plane, too. I love Donny.\u201d I tell her how much I liked him when I met him. \u201cOh my God, isn\u2019t he the loveliest man?! I sat next to him on The Masked Singer, and he was my poster boy.\u201d She points to her legs. Eh? I say. \u201cI\u2019ve got goose bumps.\u201d And the goose bumps really are visible.<\/p>\n She comes to a stop. And she\u2019s gone from hyper to a brief unexpected low. \u201cNobody really understood what it meant to me sitting next to Donny. All the people in my life who would have really got what that meant to me had died \u2013 my sister, my dad, my granny.\u201d Seconds later, she has refuelled. The energy\u2019s back. \u201cAnd when I came back from that MTV trip I thought: I want to work there.\u201d<\/p>\n Was access to celebrity part of what attracted her to MTV? \u201cNo, it was the vibe, the energy. It felt like if you had an idea and you went to somebody at MTV, they\u2019d go: let\u2019s do it. I remember turning up there and Robbie [Williams] had just left Take That and they said they were going to do a two-hour special in an hour! It was so exciting to be around.\u201d<\/p>\n But there were two problems. MTV wanted to hire presenters from the continent, and McCall was too much of a wreck to hold down a proper job. At 25, she got clean. She says she had to give up alcohol before she could contemplate giving up drugs. What had been the attraction of heroin? \u201cYou take heroin because you\u2019re deeply insecure and part of your extrovertism is to cover up your deep insecurity. Heroin is like a hug and it tells you that you don\u2019t need anyone or anything, and everything\u2019s all right.\u201d<\/p>\n Sobriety soon paid off. \u201cAmazingly, six months clean, I get a call off MTV, who I had been trying to get a screen test off. If I\u2019d have got a screen test off them when I was still using I would have messed it up.\u201d She has never drunk alcohol or taken drugs since then. Nor has she been without work.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Inside Saturday<\/span><\/p>\n The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend.<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n McCall quickly became the queen of reality TV. She had something different. She was fun without being OTT, sincere without being cloying, funny without dominating and, most importantly, she seemed to love what she was doing and care about the people on the shows. You felt she would have just as happily been a contestant as the presenter.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018I\u2019m an amplifier. I take good news and spread it everywhere.\u2019 Coat: Richard Quinn. Ring: Laura Vann<\/span><\/p>\n There has been a consistency to all the work she has done over the past 30 years. Today, she\u2019s promoting Stranded on Honeymoon Island, a new dating show that\u2019s a melange of other dating shows \u2013 contestants have to marry (though it\u2019s not legally binding) then spend time together on a desert island. The first show she presented, Streetmate, was one of the earliest of the genre. It involved McCall rolling up to strangers in different places, asking them if they were single and were up for her finding them a date (which involved the contestant telling McCall who they fancied on the street and her then playing matchmaker). It was simple, audacious and had infinitely more energy than most of today\u2019s shows (including the first episode of Stranded).<\/p>\n I tell her I watched an episode of Streetmate earlier today. \u201cOhmygodwhichonewhichone<\/em>?\u201d she replies in turbo-drive Davina. I tell her it was a show in which the woman calls the man a laddish loser, says he has no chance, and they end up together. \u201cOh my God! So good.\u201d She\u2019s panting with excitement. And laughing. Pant-laughing. \u201cOh my God, you know I nearly did Streetmate again when it came back [in 2017], then they changed their minds and went for Scarlett [Moffatt]. I loved<\/em> that show. It was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n But it was on Big Brother, the groundbreaking C4 show in which a bunch of strangers were locked inside a house together under constant observation, that McCall really made her mark, and for which she remains best known. The first few series were compelling. As was McCall, particularly when collecting newly evicted contestants from the house, with the catchphrase: \u201cBig Brother house, this is Davina. You are live on Channel 4; please do not swear. You<\/em> have been evicted. I\u2019m coming to get you.\u201d<\/p>\n The first series of Big Brother was mega. A serious TV show the broadsheets were unpicking, a psychological experiment<\/p>\n McCall adored Big Brother. And still does. \u201cThe first series was mega. I remember thinking: oh my God, the broadsheets are talking about us. I\u2019d never been on a show where the broadsheets talked about it, and here was a serious TV show that people were unpicking. It was a psychological experiment. It was so<\/em> good.\u201d<\/p>\n She talks about some of her favourite contestants \u2013 Anna Nolan, the Irish woman who had trained as a nun and with whom she\u2019s still friendly (\u201cWe share the same birthday!\u201d); Pete Bennett, who has Tourette syndrome; Helen \u201cI like blinking, I do\u201d Adams, who fell in love with Paul Clarke on the show; Nikki Grahame (\u201cShe was fucking great \u2013 so brilliant and funny and full of life\u201d) and Jade Goody, who both died tragically young; Chantelle Houghton, who had to pretend she was famous in the Celebrity Big Brother house. She\u2019d still be going, if I hadn\u2019t stopped her.<\/p>\n I tell her that when I interviewed Pete we were both in bed (no, I can\u2019t remember why) and show her the photo. She howls with delight. \u201cAwwww, that\u2019s so fucking great. Oh my God! That is so iconic. Oh. My. God. Sweeeet<\/em>!\u201d<\/p>\n Big Brother had controversies by the bucket-load \u2013 rowdiness, fights, a racist row after Goody referred to the Indian contestant Shilpa Shetty as \u201cShilpa Poppadom\u201d and two other contestants used racist language. In Big Brother series five, fake evictions led to a huge scrap involving most of the contestants. \u201cFight Night was quite frightening when we had to get security to go in,\u201d she says. \u201cNobody thought it would kick off like that. We learned more as they went on. Now they don\u2019t allow alcohol like they used to. You used to be able to get booze whenever you wanted.\u201d Was it booze that led to the problems? \u201cThat\u2019s what they learned in the end. That\u2019s why they locked the alcohol away.\u201d<\/p>\n How did she deal with the racist incident? \u201cI owed it to them to give them an opportunity to know we knew what had happened, to not trip them up. So, off-camera, we said we saw the racist slurs, and this is an opportunity for you to make it OK. That was us trying to safeguard them.\u201d She admits safeguarding was primitive back then. \u201cThey were greeted by boos on their way out. It was scary for them. Most of the time, when people came out and were booed it was panto. But that night it felt different. We\u2019d asked those girls to go on that show. I felt the weight of that.\u201d<\/p>\n I tell her that my younger daughter, Maya, who was a huge fan of reality shows such as Big Brother, feels they are unreality shows these days \u2013 full of artifice and set pieces, and contested by indistinguishable, surgically enhanced influencers. We decide to ring Maya so she can say her piece.<\/p>\n \u201cI agree completely<\/em>,\u201d McCall <\/em>shouts into the phone. \u201cCompletely.<\/em> I think reality TV\u2019s been going so long it\u2019s no longer reality. People know what\u2019s coming and they are so used to the format that they know how to prepare themselves, and it no longer feels real. I think it\u2019s also because of safeguarding. The OG versions were where we\u2019d get really real, with people from all walks of life who weren\u2019t used to being on television. They wanted to be on Big Brother for an experience. But things happened that made the producers so nervous for people\u2019s safety that they ended up going for people who maybe would be a bit more used to being on television.\u201d Maya and McCall swap notes on favourite contestants. \u201cLovely to meet you! Byeeeeeeeee!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n McCall insists it\u2019s still impossible to fake it on Big Brother because the camera will eventually find you out. \u201cTo do eight weeks in a house with no contact with the outside world is really fucking difficult. After a week, even celebrities forget they\u2019re on camera.\u201d<\/p>\n McCall mentions My Mum, Your Dad, the dating TV series she presented for older people looking for new love. She says that\u2019s an example of a show where there\u2019s still a high degree of reality. Yes, I say, but all the contestants were ridiculously gorgeous. \u201cThey had normal bodies, though. They weren\u2019t people with loads of plastic surgery, and they had baggage. But we stopped after two series because nobody watched it.\u201d Why? \u201cI don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t know if they\u2019re not young enough, if there wasn\u2019t enough sex.\u201d<\/p>\n Did it upset her that nobody watched it? \u201cWhat was nice was that those people who did watch it became obsessed with it and it was critically acclaimed. I\u2019ve been in this game for so long that you know sometimes you do things you love and people don\u2019t come to it.\u201d<\/p>\n In recent years, McCall has become something of an educator, starting with books on fitness and diet. In 2022, she published the bestselling Menopausing. \u201cI hit menopause when I was 43 and then started talking about it when I was 45, 46. And I was so surprised that it was something all women were going to go through and yet none of us seemed to know anything about it.\u201d Menopausing was named Book of the Year at the British Book awards in 2023.<\/p>\n She says she no longer sees herself primarily as a presenter. So what would she call herself? \u201cNow I\u2019d say I\u2019m an amplifier.\u201d Wow, what\u2019s one of them, I ask. \u201cI take good news and spread it everywhere. Or I\u2019m an information highway.\u201d How long has she been an information highway? \u201cSince menopause.\u201d<\/p>\n The book she had wanted to write for two decades was about childbirth. But publishers didn\u2019t see McCall and pregnancy as marketable bedfellows. Ironically, in her late 50s, they gave her the go-ahead. \u201cI wanted to do this book 18 years ago when my son was born, but they thought this was a weird, left-field thing. But after I\u2019d done the menopause book, people were like: \u2018What would you like to do next?\u2019. And I was like: \u2018Yes!<\/em> Now I can\u2019t give birth any more, but I can write about it!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m staring at a squiggle on her wrist as she talks. What is it? \u201cOh, this is a tattoo for my sister who died, Caroline. And this one is for my other sister, Milly.\u201d Has she got any other notable tattoos? She lifts her skort to reveal an alien on her bottom. \u201cI went to America for MTV and they wanted to film me getting a tattoo, so I was like: OK, I\u2019m going to get HR Giger\u2019s Alien.\u201d Was that her first tattoo? \u201cNo.\u201d She shows me her left wrist. \u201cIt\u2019s supposed to be a rose, but I think it looks like a vagina with a pair of bollocks. So that\u2019s why I got that stalk put on to make it look like a flower.\u201d<\/p>\n We\u2019ve been chatting for over two hours. As I prepare to leave, I tell her that I had encephalitis as a child and I felt I came out of it a totally different person. \u201cYes!\u201d <\/em>She nods vigorously. \u201cI think I\u2019m just learning who I am without Jeffrey.\u201d What\u2019s changed? \u201cWhen I came out of the operation, I didn\u2019t know what country I was in, or that I\u2019d had the operation done. I didn\u2019t know anything. But I do remember waking up and going, \u2018Oh my God, the noise. The noise in my brain,\u2019 and I realised later they were thoughts.\u201d<\/p>\n What does she mean? She says she used to be so full of questions about how and why things worked. Often they were daft or inconsequential (What are the ideal-sized heels for women to wear comfortably? What is the perfect way to describe the colour of her shirt?), but they were still thoughts. \u201cI said to Michael twice in the year-and-a-half of me leading up to finding out about the tumour: \u2018Do you always think?\u2019 And he said: \u2018Yeah, I\u2019m always thinking.\u2019 And I remember saying to myself: \u2018I used to be like that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n About five years ago, she says, she stopped asking herself questions. \u201cI\u2019d stopped thinking, and I\u2019m sure that was a symptom of the tumour.\u201d Now, McCall couldn\u2019t be more aware of the noise in her head, of those thoughts banging around, and she couldn\u2019t be happier with them. \u201cI feel I\u2019ve got myself back,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Stranded on Honeymoon Island is on BBC One and iPlayer. Birthing by Davina McCall is published by HQ on 11 September (\u00a322). To support the Guardian buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It all starts with the coil. Of course it does. This is Davina, and Davina McCall doesn\u2019t do personal by halves. \u201cI loved the coil, but people always used to go, \u2018I\u2019m not getting the coil, ugh.\u2019 I always wondered why it wasn\u2019t more popular.\u201d So, it was June 2023 and McCall was getting her<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[3151,2121,11920,211,141,146,632,2957,11921,2921,6474,11922,6843],"class_list":{"0":"post-19462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-addiction","9":"tag-brain","10":"tag-davina","11":"tag-didnt","12":"tag-dying","13":"tag-kids","14":"tag-killed","15":"tag-leave","16":"tag-mccall","17":"tag-reality","18":"tag-terrified","19":"tag-tumour","20":"tag-wasnt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}