WHAT DAVINA DID NEXT

Happier and fitter than ever – how the star found a new lease of life

Do you mind if I put my teeth in?’ As opening gambits go, it’s strong. Who knew that Davina Mccall wore dentures? But just as I’m wondering why the tabloids haven’t picked up on ‘Poor Toothless Davina’ as a worthy successor to ‘Poor

Jen’, she brandishes a crescent of gleaming clear plastic tooth moulds. ‘I’ve had my Invises off,’ she says, explaining that she recently had Invisalign braces fitted. ‘It was either that or a tit job.’ And there she is: Relatable Davina, conveying the very essence of her brand, her likeability and her success in one tidy soundbite. Immediately you’re drawn in.

She’s just like me, you think – a middle-aged woman hankering after self-improvement. To further emphasise her down-to-earthness, she’s wearing exercise gear – a grey vest, grey leggings and doughty blue trainers – having run to the ITV headquarters where we meet. Where has she run from? Frankly, it could be Timbuktu. Mccall is famously, gleamingly fit, with 14 fitness

DVDS to her name, a 15-year relationship with beauty brand Garnier (which has seen her front some of their biggest campaigns for Nutrisse and Ambre Solaire) and abs that would put Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to shame. Today, she’s as coiled with energy as a Labrador, and with the same warm brown eyes. Never would you guess that she’s 50 years old, or that she recently separated from her husband of 17 years. The split was a shock, given that Mccall’s marriage to TV presenter-turned-entrepreneur Matthew Robertson was regarded as one of the most solid in showbiz, so the saying goes. Save for a motivational quote posted to her Instagram in November (that included the phrase ‘your past is your past. Leave it there. Get on with the future part’), she has stayed quiet on the subject, only speaking of it once, after a video she posted led some of her fans to erroneously assume she’d spent Christmas alone. Appearing on ITV’S This Morning in January, she confirmed that she and Robertson had spent Christmas together with their three children. Today, she says little on the subject, only that she’ll never speak about it in detail. ‘I know it’s annoying,’ she says, ‘but it’s for the children’s sake. They are my priority and always will be.’

The problem with being as famously open as Mccall has been, however, is that her fans expect that openness in perpetuity, and feel almost cheated if she closes up. But unlike, say, her well-documented battles with drink and drugs, the breakdown of her marriage didn’t just

‘I’M PROBABLY THE HAPPIEST WITH MY BODY THAT I EVER HAVE BEEN’

happen to her, it happened to her family. Whatever heartache has gone on behind the scenes, the woman sitting in front of me today seems happy, healthy and brimful of optimism for the future. ‘I’m in a good place,’ she smiles. Talk turns to her 50th birthday last year. Did the milestone faze her? ‘Not in the slightest! Not at all. When I was 30 and looked forward to 50, I was like, “Life’s going to be over, 50 is going to be terrible, I’m going to be in Scholl shoes, I’m never going to wear a bikini ever again.” And, actually, I obsess about categorically busting every myth. In fact, it’s becoming a bit of a personal mission. If somebody tells me, “Well, you’re this age, you shouldn’t be doing that any more,” I’m going to do it even more, just to annoy them.’

Mccall says she has been reading a lot about longevity recently. ‘We’re all going to live to 100. Maybe even 120. So this is midlife. We all might have to work until 70. But I love working. Working is important for mental health and keeping your mind active.’

One of the things that most surprised her about being 50 is how she feels physically. ‘Not having periods is quite a relief,’ she admits. ‘For a week a month I’d be in such a bad mood. You can forget about that completely. Body-wise, I’m probably the happiest with my body that I ever have been. I’ve got more saggy skin because of my age, but that doesn’t bother me – not a fuck is given. People are always going on about [wearing] bikinis on beaches, and I’m like, “Why wouldn’t you? Who cares?” We need to get out there and do it. We need to show them it’s fine and we don’t care. I’m much happier in my own skin now, more than ever. In my 20s, one of the reasons I took drugs was because I felt deeply uncomfortable about everything then. When I took drugs, I felt okay. But I suppose now I have that “not caring” thing. That’s a much happier place to be.’

One of the more challenging things about interviewing Mccall is that you are unlikely to unearth any shocking revelations, because she’s already revealed everything with a candour that most professionals of her standing would balk at. That her drug and alcohol addictions [she entered rehab in her 20s with the help of her boyfriend at the time, singer Eric Clapton] are so well documented is why she is so at ease with talking about them now: there are no skeletons in her closet, which must be liberating, even if that feeling has been hard-won. ‘I always decided to be open,’ she says. ‘It’s become kind of a trendy thing now but, at the time, 26 years ago, nobody who was a drug addict and an alcoholic was on television, and nobody ever talked about it. I thought, “Somebody is going to find out about it. I need to start talking, just to get it out.” And then it was my label for a few years. You know, “Davina’s drink and drug hell.”’

Perhaps surprisingly for someone who’s been through so much, she doesn’t think she has changed. ‘I’ve pretty much stayed the same,’ she says. ‘I’m the same person, just a bit more grounded. One of the ways I described myself in my 30s was “half mum, half wild child”. And that is so true. I am extremely, annoyingly compliant. I hate breaking the rules, and I love it when people tell me what to do and I can deliver. I always want to do a good job. I’m like the perfect Brownie. But then the other half of me wants to flash my boobs on the red carpet. I want to be naughty with my friend Lynn when we go out dancing. My mum was really naughty, and I definitely got that from her. But now I don’t do drugs and I don’t drink alcohol, I can keep my naughtiness under control.’

‘I AM ANNOYINGLY COMPLIANT, BUT HALF OF ME WANTS TO FLASH MY BOOBS ON THE RED CARPET’

So what does she do to be naughty instead? ‘I let my hair down,’ she smiles. ‘Dancing, music. Nothing really replaces alcohol, but oh, my God, I dance a lot better without booze than I did with booze. If you don’t have to give up booze, then for God’s sake don’t give up booze. I had to grieve not drinking. That was so sad. But I knew that alcohol was the gateway to drugs for me, and it would still be the gateway. It’s just not worth it.’

She says the challenges, routines and adrenaline highs that come with working out suit her driven all-or-nothing personality. ‘Yes! Come on!’ she whoops when our talk turns to fitness, and she leaps out of her seat in such a manner that I’m afraid she’ll take me on a circuit round the studios. She is a huge advocate of exercise for the mental health benefits, although she only ‘became a runner’ last summer, and says she went ‘slightly Forrest Gump’ shortly before doing The Great North Run in Newcastle. ‘I’ve done a couple of marathons but, last summer, running, I got this euphoria that I used to get from clubbing,’ she smiles. ‘I think it’s because I listen to music. Really loud. Sometimes I can be seen running like a lunatic with my hands outstretched. I love it!’ Does she have days when she can’t be arsed? ‘Some mornings I don’t want to do it,’ she admits. ‘I’m down. I’m tired. Especially at the weekend, I’d much rather stay in bed. But I’ve never regretted a workout.’

At her happiest, she’s ‘with the kids and laughing’. ‘They’re hilarious. They think it’s quite weird that

I laugh so much.’ Although she admits, ‘With three kids, it’s not always harmonious but, when the magic happens, I’ll think, “This is amazing.”’ Before having her eldest child, Holly, 16, Mccall says she worked almost too hard. ‘I was so ambitious. I wasn’t the ambitious where I’d step on your head to get to where I wanted to, but I was happy to work six, seven days a week and give more than what was expected. Then I had Holly and I never wanted to work again. But I’d set up a lifestyle where I had to keep working. I had the house and the mortgage. Going back to work was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. My heart hurt for months. The second I was finished at work, I’d rush home. If I could get home for bedtime, it was such an achievement.’

While she acknowledges she missed out on parts of their childhood, she takes comfort in knowing her children appreciate her work ethic. ‘Holly always says, “I just admire that you’ve done so much with us and with work. I know it’s been hard sometimes, and you’ve been a great mum,”’ she smiles. ‘They’re going to have to work, so I guess it’s important for them to see that I have had to work, too. It’s about trying to be an example.’ So much of an example, in fact, that the family motto (yes, they have a family motto) is ‘give more than is expected’. ‘I started that,’ she says proudly. ‘I believe you will always do well in everything if you just give more.’

Davina Mccall doesn’t strike you as the sort of person who ever feels as though she can sit back and relax because she’s made it. ‘I’ve done all right,’ she concedes on the topic of her 26-year career as one of Britain’s most recognisable TV anchors. ‘I’ve achieved everything I wanted to achieve. Also, I’ve realised that I don’t need much. When I was in my 30s, I was like, “I want the house, I want the dog, I want the car.” But I don’t need it. I don’t really want it. As I’ve got older, all I want to do is help make lives a bit better. I’m a self-help junkie. So every show that I do, I want either to be having a really good time, like I do on The Jump, or helping people.’

It’s an inclination that’s evident in shows she fronts, like ITV’S Long Lost Family and This Time Next Year. That Mccall has that rare trick of being empathetic without coming across as fake is central to both programmes’ success, with This Time Next Year currently airing its second series and Long Lost

Family returning later this year for its eighth. ‘If you’ve experienced stuff…’ she begins before trailing off. ‘Everybody’s had hardships, and people need to experience difficulty to learn how to be resilient. If you haven’t been through anything difficult, the minute you do, it will hit you like a freight train and you won’t know what to do because you’ve never been given the tools to deal with it. I had an interesting childhood, and it was colourful,’ she says, referring to her mother, who left her, aged three, with her grandparents ‘to go on holiday’, but didn’t tell her she wasn’t coming back. ‘I’m not a victim in any way, but it was tricky. I think that’s made me a resilient person, but also, if somebody’s going through something, I’ll know what that feels like. When I think of all the stuff that happened with my mum in my childhood, and the drugs and the alcohol, and my sister dying, and knowing I got through that… all of those things make you think “throw anything at me – I’ll be okay”.’

Mccall’s not afraid to let her emotions show in a startlingly visceral way – evident from the interview she gave at the end of her gruelling seven-day endurance Sport Relief challenge in 2014, where she sat, physically broken, gripping on to pal Jo Brand, or her heart-wrenching Desert Island Discs episode in 2016 in which she discussed her mother selling private pictures to a newspaper. Yet, underneath, there’s an incredibly steely core – and perhaps that’s what we love about her most.

‘It might be hard, but I do feel I could deal with anything,’ she says, her fresh start at 50 no doubt included. ‘But I’ve also learned that I’m generally optimistic.’ She smiles, looking just that. ‘I don’t know if you can learn that,’ she adds, ‘so it’s something that I’m really grateful for.’

‘ALL I WANT TO DO IS HELP MAKE LIVES BETTER. I’M A SELF-HELP JUNKIE’