Davina McCall

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2016

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Davina McCall is an English television presenter. She began her career on MTV before moving to Channel 4 with the cult hit Streetmate. She was the presenter of Big Brother during its run on Channel 4 between 2000 and 2010 and enjoyed it so much that she planned her family around the transmission schedule. All three of her children were born in September. Davina hosts a variety of prime time and popular programmes including ITV's Long Lost Family which seeks to reunite family members. Her own childhood was complicated. Her French mother was an alcoholic and drug user, and Davina was largely brought up by her father and grandparents. After a difficult childhood, she moved to London with her father and step-mother, and during some wild teenage years, she became a drug user. She has been clean since she was 25. Alongside her television presenting career, she has a large following with her fitness DVDs and healthy food cookbooks. In 2014, she undertook a 500 mile triathlon for Sport Relief raising more than two million pounds. Producer: Sarah Taylor.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the BBC.
0:04.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young.
0:06.0	Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.
0:10.0	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
0:14.0	For more information about the program please visit BBC.co.
0:19.0	UK slash radio4. slash Radio 4 My castaway this week is Devina McColl, a Queen of Prime Time for a long time, her glamour,
0:45.6	warmth and willing are ideally suited to the small screen.
0:49.2	Big Brother, Comic Relief, Million Pound Drop, Long Lost family, her TV shows span the channels and the
0:55.1	choices of millions of viewers. She stands out from the immaculately quuffed pack for her
1:00.7	ability to talk to real people like they are real people.
1:05.0	Her sheer bloody-minded gumptions interesting too.
1:08.0	A couple of years back she completed a 500 mile triathlon,
1:12.0	raising well over 2 million pounds for a charity helping the disadvantaged.
1:15.9	She herself knows that life can be tough as a little girl.
1:19.8	She rarely saw her mother and would go on in her teens and 20s to fight drug addiction.
1:24.0	She says, being famous has its downsides in the same way as not being famous has its downsides.
1:29.7	I'm very very grateful that I got famous after I got clean and after I was 25 which meant
1:35.5	I'd worked in the real world and struggled to pay my rent so welcome to Vina
1:40.5	McCall an important feature of your life these days is and we get the
1:45.0	the selfies of the flat stomach and you came bouncing in here today you look like you've
1:48.8	already done a workout have you? I haven't I haven't no it's okay don't
1:53.2	don't worry kasty I'm not that and I think people always say to me oh god do you
	...

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