‘We don’t cry on camera’
LLF’S DAVINA & NICKY
Grab the tissues! Davina Mccall and Nicky Campbell are back to reunite more families…
ou’ve got a first this Y series – where childhood sweethearts reunite to find their long lost son… Davina: We’ve never had a couple before who have split up and come back together. They were madly in love, but when they had a baby they just didn’t have the support. They went on to have two more children but they never had another son – and then they split up, but they’re still such good friends… nicky: The bit that got me was when we told them we’d found [their son] Simon and they cuddled each other. The father said: “Now I can live my life.” I watched it with my wife and we went through an entire box of tissues.
Do you find yourselves welling up on camera doing this show?
D: I’d rather stab myself with a Biro than cry on camera because it would be awful if they (the people they are helping) had to ask US if we were OK. I cry when I read the notes and the stories – like the case of Cathie, looking for her mum for 10 years, and just at the time she applied to be on the show her mum died. n: I have to hold back. In episode one I’m with Anne – the halfsister of Cathie – and Anne showed me their mother’s diary where every year she’d written, “Cathie’s birthday.” That really choked me up.
Davina, in that episode we see two long lost sisters becoming close, is that particularly painful for you? [Davina lost half-sister Caroline to cancer in 2012].
D: Whenever we have a sister reunion I always think how amazingly fortuitous it is to find a sister, because I had mine taken away. It’s poignant for me and part of me wants to say to people: “Really cherish this because it’s the most precious thing ever.” But I don’t need to because they already know.
and nicky, being adopted, there must be elements of the series that chime with you?
n: All the time, though my adoption tracing journey was not such a massive emotional thing – more of an intense curiosity. But what I get completely is people who say they don’t want to trace [their birth parents] because they had such a good adoption and they don’t want to feel disloyal to their [adoptive] parents. Or they don’t want to disrupt another family. Yep – that’s my life!
How do you manage to switch off after an intense day of filming?
D: I can’t talk. Sometimes at the end of a really heavy day, when I get in the car afterwards, I don’t want to talk. So, if my husband calls I’ll say: “I’ll call you in about half an hour because I can’t talk right now.” n: I do news and reporting on the radio and after all the terrible things recently, for me, LLF has been a sanctuary of loveliness. Everything that’s good about us and humanity and people…
This is series seven; can you see LLF going on and on and on?
D: I can’t see why not, there are always people looking. We’ll be sprinting around the streets in our 90s! n: As long as it goes on, we’ll be there. Because we love it. We could do it on mobility scooters!