Davina
McCall
Not
many people have squeezed as much into their first 39 years as Davina
McCall. She has been, at various points, a singer, a restaurant manager,
a model-agency booker, and a singing waitress. In the last ten years,
she’s become one of the highest-profile presenters on British
television, as well as becoming a mother to three children.
A
new series of Big Brother, Channel 4’s flagship reality show which
McCall has ably helmed from the off, is set to start in the coming weeks.
She and fellow host Dermot O’Leary are in a North London studio
for their BB8 publicity photo shoot and McCall seems as excited
as if it were her first ever show. In person, she is every bit as warm
and fun as her TV persona, and couldn’t be monosyllabic if she
tried. In short, she’s an interviewer’s dream.
Big
Brother has made a lot of people famous, for varying lengths of
time. But actually, the ultimate person who’s been made famous
by Big Brother is you. Did you ever think it would be as huge
as it has turned out to be?
No. When I first did it I thought it was just another gig, but as time’s
gone by, it’s become bigger and bigger. What I like about it is
that it’s about the people in the house, not about the people
who host it. But I also think being in the house is no longer a stepping-stone
to fame. It’s become less and less about that. I think people
have realised that once you’re an ex-Big Brother housemate,
you’re tarnished. It’s perfect for someone like Nadia, because
Nadia had something she needed to prove to herself. She was never really
after a career.
Do
you think the fact that you’ve had difficult patches in your life
makes you more sympathetic to some of the more complex Big Brother
characters?
I suppose I can empathise with different sorts of people, because I’ve
been through lots of different things throughout my life. Life experience
is very helpful for relating to other people, because it gives me insights
I wouldn’t otherwise have. And it made me realise that I’m
by no means a perfect person, so I don’t expect others to be perfect.
Which
have been your favourite moments in past Big Brothers?
Nadia winning was a very emotional one for me. Brian winning - that
was great. The bedsit where the girls were living, the box task, Pete
Burns, George Galloway and Rula Lenska. There have been so many amazing,
amazing moments. Big Brother is an ongoing joy, and I’m
very, very lucky to be hosting it.
If
you could have one wish for this Big Brother, what would it
be?
I want to laugh, laugh, laugh until I pee my pants.
Do
you get to choose your own clothes for Big Brother? You wear some quite
‘out there’ stuff sometimes.
AJ is my stylist, and she’s brilliant! She comes up with outfits
that she thinks I might wear, and it’s stuff that I wouldn’t
necessarily be brave enough to wear on my own or when I go out. I live
in the country, so I’m always in jeans and a t-shirt. So to have
someone say ‘Try a hat’ or ‘Try a cape’ is quite
fun. It’s like dressing up.
Most
of your work has been live TV. Do you prefer it that way?
When you’ve done live TV it’s quite hard to get into studio
stuff where they’ll say ‘Take five… take six…
take seven…’ The nice thing about live, as a viewer, is
the sense that anything could happen. I find live TV more fun. And I
don’t get nervous doing it any more.
In
your TV career you’ve done some enormously high profile shows,
from Big Brother to the BAFTAs, Comic Relief
and, obviously, God’s Gift.
God’s Gift - now that was brilliant TV. Bring it back!
Bring it back!
What’s
been the high point of them all for you?
Funnily enough, because it was my first foray into television, I really
enjoyed doing God’s Gift. Let’s not get it confused
with anything other than a daft programme where men ended up in their
pants in front of an audience of baying women! When I took it on, I
thought that it could either be the end of my career or it could be
the beginning. And it ended up, for some unknown reason, becoming some
sort of cult show. I had no script at all, I wrote everything, it was
completely mad, freeform television, that was really good fun…
hugely exciting for me.
Congratulations
on the birth of number three last September. What’s it like having
a boy after two girls?
Well, for the first month I kept saying ‘Good girl’…‘Oh,
look at her’, that sort of thing. So it took a bit of getting
used to. And the whole changing nappy thing is interesting. But it’s
just heaven. And I look at photos of us now. When we had two children
we looked quite controlled, but now we’re a gang. I love it!
And
all three of them are September babies. Do you essentially save your
amorous moments only for Christmas time?
What happens, in all honesty, is that we say ‘We can get pregnant
any time after Christmas, because that’ll tie in okay with Big
Brother’. So we say, ‘We’ll start thinking about it
at Christmas, and see what happens’. And clearly we’re just
extremely compatible, Matthew and I, and it just seems that I get pregnant
really quickly.
You
recently made a programme about sex education for Channel 4. It’s
an important issue for you, isn’t it?
Well, I just find it amazing that, with the statistics we’ve got
regarding teenage pregnancy, there is still no sex education on the
curriculum in this country. How can we not be teaching our children
about how to have a healthy emotional life? For me, sexual welfare is
part of emotional welfare. I think it would be a nation-changing decision
if the government would just introduce proper sex education.
