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Actor

1967-10-16 · Wimbledon · Female

65 series in the catalog

Davina Lucy Pascale McCall (born 16 October 1967) is an English television presenter. She rose to prominence as the host of Channel 4's Big Brother from 2000 to 2010 and Celebrity Big Brother from 2001 to 2010. She has also presented programmes including Streetmate, The Million Pound Drop, The Biggest Loser, Long Lost Family, This Time Next Year, The Jump, and My Mum, Your Dad. Since 2020, she has been a judge on The Masked Singer UK.

After establishing herself in entertainment and reality television, McCall later became known for factual programming, particularly programmes centred on personal stories, health and relationships. In the 2020s, she presented Davina McCall: Sex, Myths and the Menopause, Davina McCall: Sex, Mind and the Menopause, Davina McCall's Pill Revolution and Davina McCall's Language of Love. Her later work has been associated with widening public discussion of menopause and women's health in the United Kingdom.

McCall was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting. She received the Special Recognition award at the National Television Awards in 2024.

Early life and education

Davina Lucy Pascale McCall was born on 16 October 1967 in Wimbledon, London, to a French mother, Florence (née Hennion), and an English father, Andrew McCall. After her parents separated, she went to live with her paternal grandparents in Surrey at the age of three.

In later interviews, McCall said that her relationship with her mother remained difficult in adulthood, and that she eventually sought therapy to address it. She said that the estrangement continued to shape her private life and her understanding of family relationships.

She attended St Catherine's School, Bramley and Godolphin and Latymer School, and studied for nine O levels and two A levels.

Early career and breakthrough

Before entering television, McCall worked at Models 1 and later in hospitality and London's nightclub scene. She later said that, after becoming sober in her mid-20s, she began working in television and secured a role with MTV Europe.

Later profiles linked McCall's television breakthrough closely to her recovery from addiction. Eva Wiseman wrote that McCall had spent several years pursuing work at MTV; after attending Narcotics Anonymous and becoming sober, she secured the audition that led to her first presenting role there. Simon Hattenstone likewise wrote that sobriety preceded the career phase that made her a familiar television presence.

McCall's early television work included presenting on MTV Europe and ITV, and in the late 1990s she became more widely known as the host of Channel 4's dating show Streetmate.

Big Brother and mainstream fame

In 2000, McCall was chosen to present the inaugural series of Big Brother. She hosted the programme's live eviction shows and began presenting Celebrity Big Brother the following year. Big Brother became closely associated with McCall's public profile and remained the programme for which she was best known during her years at Channel 4.

Profiles of McCall during and after her Big Brother years frequently emphasised her warmth and accessibility as a presenter. Stuart Husband wrote in 2005 that she had "cornered the market in empathy and excitement", while Cole Moreton described her as "like a big sister on the telly". In a 2025 profile, Simon Hattenstone argued that early reality television suited McCall because she appeared to care about participants rather than merely manage them.

McCall remained the face of Channel 4's Big Brother throughout the 2000s. Alongside it, she presented other entertainment programmes including Popstars: The Rivals and The Vault, and became a regular co-presenter of the BBC charity telethons Comic Relief and Sport Relief. In 2008, she appeared as a fictionalised version of herself in the Channel 4 horror serial Dead Set, set in the Big Brother house.

In 2005, the BBC announced that McCall would host Davina, a weeknight BBC One chat show commissioned for eight hour-long episodes. The programme was billed as BBC One's first weeknight chat show since Terry Wogan's had been dropped, and made McCall the first female host of a prime-time British chat show. The show was poorly received and was not recommissioned after its first run. In 2006, BBC One controller Peter Fincham said its failure was "all my fault", describing it as a risk that had not worked. McCall later described the programme as the "worst mistake" of her life and said that, after its low ratings, she feared her career was over. Although she later said that the experience made her fear for her future on television, Big Brother remained central to her public image. Wiseman wrote in 2024 that McCall had long been known as the "beating heart" of the programme.

When Channel 4 ended its run of Big Brother in 2010, McCall presented the final regular series and Ultimate Big Brother.

Later presenting and factual work

In 2010, McCall began presenting Channel 4's live game show The Million Pound Drop. During the 2010s, she fronted a wide range of entertainment and factual programmes, including Sky1's Got to Dance, ITV's The Biggest Loser, Long Lost Family and This Time Next Year, and Channel 4's Five Minutes to a Fortune and The Jump.

This period also established McCall as a presenter of factual programming, particularly through Long Lost Family and other programmes focused on personal stories and lifestyle change. In 2017, she also presented The Davina Hour for UKTV's W channel.

The success of Long Lost Family marked a significant shift in McCall's career away from formats built primarily around competition and elimination and towards emotionally driven factual programming. Later profiles have treated this phase as central to her reinvention as a presenter whose appeal rested as much on empathy as on entertainment value.

Recent work

Since 2020, McCall has been a judge on ITV's The Masked Singer UK. She was also a judge on the spin-off The Masked Dancer UK from 2021 to 2022.

In the 2020s, McCall presented programmes about women's health and relationships, including Davina McCall: Sex, Myths and the Menopause, Davina McCall: Sex, Mind and the Menopause, Davina McCall's Pill Revolution, Davina McCall's Language of Love and My Mum, Your Dad.

McCall has said that she sees this phase of her career less as offering expertise than as widening access to specialist knowledge. In a 2025 interview, she described herself as "an amplifier" who uses her profile to spread information she thinks is useful, while in 2023 she argued that public discussion of women's health in Britain was beginning to change after having long been treated as secondary.

In 2023, McCall appeared in the Doctor Who Christmas special episode The Church on Ruby Road. In 2024, McCall launched the podcast Begin Again. In 2025, she was announced as the host of the BBC dating series Stranded on Honeymoon Island. In 2026, McCall featured in the music video for PinkPantheress' song "Girl Like Me".

Reception and influence

McCall's later career has been strongly associated with public discussion of menopause and women's health. Coverage of her 2021 documentary on menopause credited it with helping to widen awareness of symptoms and treatment; in 2024, Eva Wiseman wrote that doctors had been "inundated" with requests about hormone replacement therapy after the programme aired, while Bupa reported a threefold rise in demand for its menopause service. The Guardian also reported in 2022 that requests for HRT had risen sharply after the documentary.

Academic commentary has also treated McCall's interventions as culturally significant. Deborah Jermyn wrote that the so-called "Davina effect" helped to bolster a new era of menopause awareness, while also arguing that the wider "menopause revolution" was often framed in ways that centred the experiences of middle-class white women rather than a more intersectional…