Presenter Davina McCall has reassured fans that she's okay and vowed to "move on" with her life after discussing her brain surgery in an emotional interview.
TV host Davina was interviewed in-depth by friend Steven Bartlett for her Begin Again podcast and the edited version lasts one hour and 45 minutes on YouTube. Davina gives many heartfelt answers and at times it feels quite a raw chat for someone who only had their brain tumour removed in November.
But at the bottom of the video on social media Davina added a note saying: "I just want to say that I'm in a really good place, and this podcast was part of that journey," to explain her tears.
She later added another video on her own Instagram saying: "My interview about my experiences with having brain surgery goes out today. Steven Bartlett interviews me. I asked Steven if he would do that because I know him. I feel very safe with him. I was at the Flight Studios office and I feel very safe there. I'm surrounded by love.
"This is a moment of time in my life that I don't want bang on about again and again and again. I don't want to be defined by this operation. I've had this operation, I'm very fortunate and it was a success and I'm gonna now move on with my life. Obviously I am going to talk about the learnings of it and stuff that I've got from it, but I wanted to also kind of document [it]."
As the Mirror reported yesterday Davina, star of ITV shows including Long Lost Family and the Masked Singer, found the colloid cyst by chance when she was given a free health scan after giving a talk on the menopause. In her interview she describes how she felt the tumour "had taken hold of me" and that initially made her angry because it made her feel "every day like I'm in danger".
But she learned to live with it, calling the tumour Jeffrey as a coping mechanism. She even threw parties for Jeffrey to downplay the signifigance of what the tumour meant and to try to stay upbeat. "I'm grateful. Life will never be the same again, but in rather a good way," the TV host said in a teary interview, her first since the operation in November.
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Begin Again with Davina McCall/YouTube)She also told how she set up a WhatsApp plan for friends and family in case she died on operating table. But thankfully the November operation was a complete success.
In the interview she also spoke about her mother and their strained relationship as well as her stepmother Gabby. Teary Davina said: "My mum was like a... a fiery whirling dervish of sexual energy. And there was Gabby, who was everything I wanted my mum to be... Gabby was everything I wanted my mum to be... I've literally fallen in love with her.... She said to me, 'I'm sorry I asked you to move out when you were nineteen'. And I said, 'It was the single greatest thing you've ever done for me.'"
Davina, 57, also went into detail of how she and partner Michael Douglas choose to comfort each other - often waiting until their tears have stopped falling before hugging. Davina says: "Michael does for me... he holds space for me. He holds space for me to feel my feelings, even if they really freak him out or they frighten him. He is not co-dependent in any way. It's so nice.
"He's taught me so much around that, like... me and him, if he needs to feel something, I don't hug him. I don't try and take it away from him. I go, 'Feel it'. And he did the same for me around this. So, if I was crying, he'd sit with me next to me, but he wouldn't touch me or hug me. He would go, "Feel it." And I would let it out. And then at the end, he'd give me an enormous hug."
Davina, the host of My Mum, Your Dad, has long advocated on women's health issues, and presented a documentary called Sex, Myths And The Menopause and another on contraception called Davina McCall's Pill Revolution.
She became an MBE in the King's birthday honours for services to broadcasting in 2023 and was given a special recognition award at the National Television Awards for her broadcasting career.
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