Davina McCall reveals secret ingredient to marriage with ‘soulmate’ husband who helped her battle cancer & brain tumour

SHE’S battled drug addiction, a brain tumour and breast cancer – but now Davina McCall is finally enjoying her “best life”. Not only has the host of Big Brother, Long Lost Family and The Masked Singer married her “soulmate”, she’s won one of TV’s top awards, after three decades on our screens. Davina McCall is living her ‘best life’ after getting married and being told she’s cancer-free Credit: Edinburgh TV Festival Davina with husband Michael Douglas at Wimbledon in July Credit: WireImage Davina, who turns 60 next year and has raised three children, married her long-term partner Michael Douglas last year, and he became her third husband. She said: “He is the kindest, smartest, most open, intelligent, wise man I’ve ever met. Sign up for the TV newsletter Thank you! “I can’t believe that I am at this ripe old age, with everything I’ve been through, and was lucky enough to experience it with him at my side. “He had just the right mix of real wisdom, knowing the right thing to say at the right time, but also just the right side of funny. Davina after finishing radiotherapy in January Credit: instagram The star with MTV Europe in 1994 Credit: Shutterstock Editorial “It’s quite depressing, being ill. It feels like it goes on for ages. We were in the supermarket and I’m pushing the trolley and he goes to get something and then he runs up to the trolley and goes, “Ah, no. You’ve got cancer. “I mean the relief, the giggle, thinking the bubble’s been burst with the stress of it all.” Davina, 58, also revealed that her benign brain tumour in 2024 had put distance between the couple, because she had no short-term memory. But her breast cancer last year bonded them back together. Most read in TV Davina also revealed that her benign brain tumour in 2024 had put distance between the couple, because she had no short-term memory. Credit: Getty Davina discusses Outstanding Achievement Award with Nicky Campbell in Edinburgh Credit: Edinburgh TV Festival Finding love with Michael completed a part of Davina’s life that was absent from an early age. From the age of three, she was largely raised in Surrey by her paternal grandparents after her parents separated and her French mum returned to France. It was a difficult relationship, leading to Davina starting to drink and smoke in her mid-teens. By her early twenties she was addicted to heroin. Davina said: “I saw myself as being like a colander with lots of holes in it. Any love or security or confidence I had when I was little would fill up the colander for a little bit and then just trickle through. I couldn’t keep hold of anything. Michael and Davina attend The Brit Awards earlier this year Credit: Getty Davina’s mum Florence Credit: FABULOUS “Then drugs filled the colander but then the drugs would run out and it would be empty again. “But I feel like, over 35 years, I’ve sealed each individual hole on the colander.” She only pursued a TV career after quitting drugs and booze, though she admits that was because she wanted fame to get validation from her mother. At the Edinburgh TV Festival, where she received the Outstanding Achievement Award, Davina said: “I was like a performing seal for my mum, I was always trying to get her to be proud. “I’d do everything for her approval but she couldn’t give it to me, she didn’t have the tools. “And then I got on MTV Europe and said, ‘did you see it?’ and she was like, ‘Yes. Why do you pull those stupid faces all the time?’. “But I was kind of grateful, because the drive got me there and I could let go of trying to impress my mum. Because while I’d been trying to impress my mum, I got my dream job. “Maybe if I hadn’t had that need, I wouldn’t have pushed so hard. I always said when I was trying to get a job in TV that a ‘no’ was just a ‘yes’ that hadn’t happened yet.” Davina was being interviewed at the festival by Nicky Campbell, her co-presenter on ITV’s Bafta-winning show Long Lost Family and one of the hidden celebrity singers on the 2024 series of The Masked Singer. He asked if her addictive personality was part of what drives her on. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Lots of people ask me if I’m addicted to working out and fitness. But I work out three or four times a week for about half an hour to 45 minutes, so I don’t think that’s it. But I can also think of worse things to be addicted to.” After MTV Europe, she made her move to the big terrestrial channels, hosting shows including God’s Gift and Streetmate, both on ITV. Then, in 2000, came the show which would make her a star — Channel 4’s Big Brother. She said “something in the universe shifted” when she got the job, and it was one that she would keep until the programme moved to Channel 5 after her last series in 2010. She also hosted Popstars: The Rivals on ITV, which discovered Girls Aloud, fronted The Million Pound Drop and The Jump for Channel 4. Then in 2011, along came Long Lost Family, a show which, she insists, has changed her the most as a human being. Through being on the panel of another ITV smash hit, The Masked Singer, for the past six years, she is still going strong and blazing a trail for older women fronting major TV shows. Which is why she was particularly moved to receive the Edinburgh TV Festival award — a gong that comes from the great and the good in the industry. Fighting back tears, she said: “It means a lot because lots of shows I’ve done have won awards, but never really for me as a presenter. “It just means something for your peers to see you. “It means the world.” 1 comment1