Culture reporter
Getty ImagesTV Presenter Davina McCall has spoken publicly for the first time about the “anger” she felt over the benign brain tumour that she was diagnosed with last year, which she said had “taken control of me”.
The 57-year-old former Big Brother host revealed in November that a colloid cyst had been found during a health check-up as part of her menopause advocacy work.
Speaking on her podcast Begin Again, a tearful McCall recalled how a scan had revealed she had a rare type of tumour that “very, very rarely” can “cause sudden death”.
She had surgery, spending time in intensive care, before recovering at home.
McCall also said she wanted to challenge the assumption many people have that benign brain tumours are not life threatening, as they can still be life-threatening.
“I felt like this thing had taken control of me and I was so angry about that,” she told businessman and fellow podcaster Steve Bartlett in the latest episode.
“I couldn’t let it go, I was like, ‘How dare you control my daily life like this and make me feel every day like I’m in danger?'”
Non-cancerous brain tumours are more common in people over the age of 50, and symptoms can include headaches, vision problems and drowsiness, according to the NHS website.
Some can be difficult to remove without damaging surrounding tissue. And Chemotherapy or radiotherapy can also be used if the surgery is not successful.
McCall said she named her tumour Jeffrey, because she doesn’t have any friends of that name, and even threw it a birthday party.
She recovered at home with the help of her partner, celebrity hairdresser Michael Douglas.
She went on to say that while she had never wanted any sympathy herself, she now has a “newfound enormous sympathy for people who have benign brain tumours”.
“I have had so many people say to me: ‘Well, at least it was benign.’ And you think: ‘You have no idea that benign brain tumours can still kill you.’
“It’s just, you don’t know when it’s going to happen,” she added. “It could happen tomorrow, it could happen in years’ time. It’s different to cancer, but it is also awful. A benign does not mean fine.”
‘Pretty terrifying’
“Living with that uncertainty is pretty terrifying,” she continued.
She said she “did not want to live with the stress of thinking any minute… I could be taken out by something.”
A longtime advocate of women’s health, McCall was given given a special recognition award at the National Television Awards last year after having been awarded an MBE in 2023 for services to broadcasting.
Nowadays the host of the ITV dating show My Mum, Your Dad, McCall said she had to get her will in order following her diagnosis and even created a WhatsApp group to ensure her family would “all find a way through if I didn’t make it”.
She added: “I did go and address my will and make sure that was airtight. I talked to Michael about my wishes. I wrote letters of wishes to all the children and put those in my will.”
While the experience has “not changed me forever”, she noted: “But I’ve learned things about myself that I would never have learned without this operation.”
She thinks that in the near future she will view the experience as “one of the greatest blessings of my life”.
The star, who recently shocked viewers by appearing in a blonde wig on the Masked Singer, urged podcast listeners to “write your bucket list now”.
