For a long time, McCall was able to keep her life under control, working as a
booking agent for Models 1 during the day and running clubs – her energy
fuelled by drugs – into the early hours. But, she says, it was the control
aspect that was so exhausting: “It’s like a white-knuckle thing – you know,
trying really hard not to do something you really want to do, and you’re
constantly in your head thinking about the next time you can go and get some
drugs.” She left a boyfriend whom she’d blamed for getting her into heroin,
but while he was able to quit, her habit got even worse. “I realised, ‘Gosh,
it’s not his fault, I’ve got to look at me.’ And the last thing I wanted to
do was stop taking everything. I just thought, ‘Am I still going to be a fun
person to be around? And aren’t I going to turn into a really boring person?
And I don’t want to be totally abstinent and I definitely can’t do it for
the rest of my life. You know, forget it.’ But I tried it every other way. I
knew I had to cut things out, so I stopped taking heroin about two months
before I got clean [at 24], but then I just had a major coke problem, so I
realised I’m obviously unable to take any drugs in moderation. And now when
I see friends of mine coming into the rooms [at NA], in their mid-thirties,
I think, ‘Well, thank God, I didn’t have to wait that long.”
At one point in our interview, McCall declared that she’s never been ambitious
in terms of her TV career. I’m not having it that you’re not ambitious! was
my response. Well, she demurred, ambition’s always seemed like a swear word
– and she hates swearing – but, yes, OK, she was ambitious to get on to
telly in the first place. And she was really proud of herself, when she
finally got an opening on MTV: “Because I’d spent three years just chewing
at people’s heels and annoying people. Tenacious. Addict without the drugs.
Because the minute I put down the drugs, I needed something else to get my
teeth into.”
Did she become a workaholic instead? “No, just tenacious. You see, if I work
at something half as hard as I used to work on scoring drugs – and addicts
spend a lot of time and effort trying to maintain their habit – then I’m
going to be extremely successful.”
Still, I doubt that Davina appeared on most people’s radars until Big Brother
really took off. And there were a fair number of turkeys on the way: a
dating show called Love on a Saturday Night; a TV race to have a millennium
baby, which she disapproved of anyway. But I do remember seeing her on a
travel show years ago, and being struck by the new presenter’s… what?
Freshness? Jauntiness? Slightly camp appeal? It’s hard to define what she
had but as her French mother might put it, McCall definitely had a certain
je ne sais quoi. So now, she’s routinely talked about in hyperbolic terms as
one of the highest-paid female presenters, and there’s the new BBC show over
the next eight weeks, hosting the Baftas for ITV and then, presumably, back
to Channel 4 for the umpteenth series of domestic squabbles in The House, of
which she says: “I’ve been very, very blessed to have a corker of a show to
always come back to and I don’t know where my career would be if I didn’t
have Big Brother to come back to, but thank goodness I have.”
Perhaps it’s because McCall has had more cause to examine herself than most of
us, but she’s rather good at assessing what makes her so popular. “One thing
I had in my favour is that I’ve never been skinny and I’m not putting myself
down, but although I think I’m attractive and I know what my good features
are, I’ve never thought of myself as a stunning beauty. And that’s a good
thing for me because sometimes if you’re really, really beautiful you’re
quite alienating.
“You know, I have to admit that when Traci walked into the Big Brother house,
I was – like – ‘OMIGOD, look at her!’ And there was a part of me that hated
her because she’s beautiful and she’s got such a bodacious body and enormous
boobs. And when I saw that she was just somebody who needs a lot of love, I
sort of melted a bit but she did have to work on me. And I don’t have to do
that because people aren’t threatened by the way I look.’ And the other
thing in her favour? “Oh,” she says, with a whoop, “I’m silly.”
What she really loves about Big Brother is when contestants say that they’ve
learnt something about themselves from the experience: “Because for some of
them it is a journey, a very personal one, and being in that house makes you
look at yourself; I mean, you’ve got nothing else to do except think about
yourself, and how your behaviour affects other people and how their
behaviour affects you and how when there’s an argument you have to resolve
it or else it just goes on and on. And it’s having to deal with things and
deal with them in an open way and do stuff that you’d never normally do on
the outside.”
Nadia, the transsexual who emerged the winner some time ago, was one of
McCall’s favourites. That was the series that got me hooked, and following
her over the weeks sometimes felt like watching an Almodóvar film which
turned into The Elephant Man, in that extraordinary moment when she broke
down in front of the camera and sobbed, “I am… not… a man…” “You see, there
was real emotion there. She wasn’t in it for the money… I really believe she
was in it for recognition and affection and that was an incredibly powerful
and beautiful thing,” McCall says, her brown eyes blazing with sincerity.
What interests me about Davina’s own journey is how far she strayed from
everything she held dear, in those lost years in her twenties. For several
years after she got clean she went to church on a regular basis because, she
says, “the vicar was amazing and unjudgmental, and he’s still one of my best
friends”. She loves singing hymns and still prays, though “I don’t know who
I’m praying to but I do believe my prayers are being heard.” When I ask her
whether she has any role models, she has an instant reply: “My granny. She’s
amazing. Highly emotional, highly opinionated, very fair and moral and just
and incredibly thoughtful and kind to the community she lives in. She does a
lot of charity work and she has a very strong faith and goes to church, and
she used to say prayers to me every night. I mean, she’s really… well, she’s
still the backbone of our family.”
It’s no surprise, then, that now she has a family of her own, and a husband
she adores who jacked in his own mini-TV career as Pet Rescue presenter to
become an Outward Bound instructor, that McCall has returned to her roots
with a big house in Surrey and lunch every Sunday with family and friends.
“A couple of years ago, my granny and I were talking about memories from
childhood and I was remembering how I used to sit at the feet of my
great-granny, who also lived with us, and how I would pinch the skin at the
top of her hand and watch how long it would take to go back down again, and
how she had these little things in her purse, like a pixie in a black cap
which she’d let me play with. And a couple of days later, my granny had gone
through the house and found the little pixie and sent it to me in the post,
and now I have it in my purse.
“That was very emotional for me… a memory from 35 years ago and she still had
it, and now I’ve got it. And she’s just done the most fantastic book for me,
called The Grandparents Book, with all our family’s stories and the treats
she was allowed when she was a little girl, and our family tree from way,
way before me, and it’s these things that are really important to me, and
will be even more so when she goes.”
It’s time for McCall to submit herself to more of the publicity hoopla she
tries to avoid. She says she feels absolutely drained, stretching out on the
banquette and whimpering as she kicks her legs in the air. But then a
thought occurs to her: “Can I just say that’s what I’d like to have as my
epitaph.” Er, what? “Wholesome but naughty. I love that. You know, I always
wanted to be a little bit naughty.”
Davina broadcasts on BBC One on February 15
