Davina McCall Biography

Davina Lucy Pascale McCall was born on October 16, 1967, in Wimbledon, London, England. Davina is of mixed descent, as her mother, Florence (née Hennion), is French and her father, Andrew McCall, is English.

Davina was 3 when her parents split, and following this, she started living with her paternal grandparents in Surrey.

Davina’s mother was an alcoholic. She went back to Paris, and Davina met her only during holidays.

Davina initially attended the St. Catherine's School at Bramley near Guildford, Surrey. She then joined the Godolphin and Latymer Girls School in Hammersmith, West London.

She studied for nine “O” levels and two “A” levels at the secondary level. Apart from English, Davina speaks fluent French.

Davina McCall sang for a band called Lazy Bear when she was still in school. At 19, she wished to become a solo classical artist and thus began attending singing classes.

However, after failing to make a name for herself as a singer, she took up a job as a booker on the men’s desk of Models 1.

She also managed a restaurant for 2 years and worked as a cabaret dancer in Paris for a while.

She then went back to London and worked as a hostess at nightclubs. In 1991, she appeared as a dancer in Kylie Minogue’s video Word Is Out.

In 1992, Davina bagged the job of a presenter on the MTV Europe show Most Wanted. Following this, she hosted Hitlist UK. In 1995, she hosted the ITV game show titled God's Gift.

In 1998, Davina hosted the dating show Streetmate, which required her to travel across the country, meet single people, and pair them up.

In 2000, Davina hosted the first season of the Channel 4 reality show Big Brother. She also started her stint on Celebrity Big Brother from its first season in March 2001.

She presented The Friday Night New Year Project 2007 in December 2007. By 2008, She had started earning £85,000 for hosting each episode of Big Brother

She also hosted the 10th and 11th seasons of Big Brother's Big Mouth. Davina hosted the final season of Celebrity Big Brother in 2010, after which she hosted her 11th and final regular season that summer. She also hosted Ultimate Big Brother.

In April 2011, Channel 5 announced that they would be relaunching Big Brother that year. However, Davina quit the show. Brian Dowling then became the presenter of the Channel 5 version, but in 2013, Emma Willis took over as the new presenter.

Meanwhile, Davina started hosting the game show The Million Pound Drop. The show was canceled in 2016 and was to be relaunched as a series named The £100K Drop.

Davina appeared as a co-host on the charity telethon named Stand Up to Cancer, from 2012 to 2016. She also co-hosted a companion series named Stars at Your Service.

In April 2013, Davina hosted a season of Five Minutes to a Fortune. From January 2014 to March 2017, Davina appeared as a host on the reality contest The Jump, which was broadcast live from Austria. The following year, she hosted Make My Body Better. Davina also hosted Prickly Heat (Sky1), Got to Dance, and One Hundred and Eighty (Sky1).

For ITV, she co-hosted four seasons of Don't Try This at Home, till 2001. She then hosted other series for the channel, such as Popstars: The Rivals (2002) The Vault (2002), Reborn in the USA (2003), and Love on a Saturday Night (2004).

She started her stint on The Biggest Loser and Long Lost Family in 2011. The Biggest Loser was canceled in 2012.

In 2013, she hosted Stepping Out, and in 2016, she presented a four-part ITV series named Davina McCall: Life at the Extreme. She also hosted three seasons of This Time Next Year from 2016 to 2019.

In 2017, Davina co-hosted a few episodes of This Morning. In 2018, she appeared on the show once more. In March 2017, Davina appeared as a guest host in five episodes of The Nightly Show.

The following year, she hosted A&E Live, a three-part series to celebrate 70 years of the NHS. In 2020, she appeared the U.K. version of the music show The Masked Singer, as a judge. The show is slated for a second season in 2021.

For BBC, she presented He's Having a Baby (2005), but the show received bad ratings.

She also co-hosted the annual British charity telethons of Comic Relief on BBC One. She has been a co-host of Red Nose Day since 2005. She has also hosted other Comic Relief shows, such as Naked Red Nose Ground Force in Practice (2001), Say Pants to Poverty (2001), The Record Breaker (1999), Comic Relief Does Fame Academy (2005), and The Big Hair Do (2003).

In 2006, Davina launched her own chat show named Davina. The show, however, was canceled later due to poor ratings. Davina launched another show, The Davina Hour, on W, in September 2017.

It was announced in 2020 that she would host Big Brother: Best Shows Ever with Rylan Clark-Neal.

Davina McCall appeared in Sam’s Game, a sitcom similar to Friends, in 2001. However, the show was a failure.

She has also lent her voice to the android Davina McCall in an episode of Doctor Who, titled Bad Wolf, in 2005.

In 2008, Davina appeared in a horror-parody version of Big Brother, named Dead Set.

She has been part of the documentary Let's Talk Sex and has also released a book related to the series.

She was seen talking about her own struggles with substance abuse and peer pressure in a video for schools, titled Watch Over Me.

In February 2014, Davina appeared in a BT Sport Relief challenge named Davina – Beyond Breaking Point, which involved participants to either run, swim, or cycle across the U.K. for 7 days, to raise funds for the charity organization Sport Relief.

Davina has also been a brand ambassador for Garnier in the U.K.

Davina McCall married Andrew Leggett in 1997, but the couple divorced in the same year.

She married Pet Rescue presenter Matthew Robertson in June 2000, at the Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire. In November 2017, the couple separated.

Davina and Matthew have three children together: daughters Holly and Tilly and son Chester.

In May 2019, it was reported that she had been dating her long-time hairstylist Michael Douglas for a while.

They confirmed their relationship in June that year, after being photographed together at the Leicester Square premiere of the movie Yesterday.

In the summer of 2020, Davina and Michael moved into their £3.4million home in Kent. In September 2020, Davina announced on Instagram that she and Michael would be returning with a second season of their podcast, Making The Cut.

Davina had also dated singer Eric Clapton in the past.

Davina McCall was supposed to travel to France in 2020, but her vacation was canceled owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. Davina thus posted a modeling session from her bedroom, posing in her bikini look, to compensate for the loss.