Sunday June 12, 2005
The Observer
She's one of Britain's highest paid TV presenters, who has cornered the market in empathy and excitement. But with Big Brother bigger than ever, is Davina McCall really planning to give it all up to become a midwife, asks Stuart Husband
As she breezes into the west London hotel for the interview and photo-shoot, bearing a Pret A Manger breadless tuna sandwich and fruit salad, and already making cracks about being a 'health Nazi', attentions are galvanised and the atmosphere charged. She beams and glad-hands, discusses the nefarious activities of a mutual acquaintance with the photographer ('he's such a minger'), bemoans the state of her mother-of-two bust as she tries on some haute-couture ('four years of breast-feeding and they've shrunk to nubs'), and elaborates on her showbiz pals (Julian Clary's 'a mate', Dale Winton's 'a great mate', and Paul O'Grady's 'a new mate - when we're all together we're camp-tastic').
Two things are immediately pikestaff-plain: McCall's lairy/flirty TV persona is no pose; and she's possibly the only 37-year-old woman who can use the word 'minger' and just-about-barely get away with it. 'People say to me, "Ooh, you're just like you are on the telly," in this sort of shocked or vaguely suspicious way,' says McCall, brightly (her default mode of discourse), as she perches on the edge of a chair (her default mode of posture). 'And I say, "Well, er, yes. What you see is what you get. No hidden depths, I'm afraid. A few hidden shallows, maybe ..."'
In truth, McCall hasn't sustained a 15-year TV career with ostentatious displays of IQ, despite a 10 O-level, two A-level haul from the private Godolphin & Latymer School in west London; what's enabled her to rise with the hits she's fronted (Streetmate, Don't Try This At Home!), and avoid the flak from the flops (The Real Holiday Show, God's Gift), is her intuitive sense of EQ - the excitability quotient. 'I've always worn my emotions on my sleeve, and I think that comes across,' she says, stabbing a slice of kiwi fruit. 'I'm pretty empathic and I'm not at all embarrassed about giving someone a hug or cuddle. That's why I've always done programmes where I've dealt with the public - I love that sense of never quite knowing what you're going to get. I couldn't imagine doing what, say, Parky does, I'm more from the school of Oprah or Trisha: "Yeah, I've been through that too, and I probably did it worse."' And she unleashes a throaty, just-this-side-of-filthy laugh.
We're speaking the day after McCall's appearance on O'Grady's teatime chat show. 'He's found his niche,' she enthuses. 'It's like Chris Tarrant with Millionaire - it's great to see someone in TV who you know is in exactly the right place.' Similarly, McCall and Big Brother, just back for its sixth season, are a perfect fit. Ne'er-the-twain battle lines will once again be drawn as to whether the original reality-TV warhorse represents mould-breaking sociological insight, lab-rat exploitation, or simply the irredeemable decline of Western civilisation; but all will agree that, as McCall presides over the contestants' fits, flare-ups and foibles, offering a cheeky 'what happened under that duvet' here or a consolatory 'there-there', um, there, it's the ultimate showcase for her touchy-feely skills. 'You couldn't imagine anyone but Davina fronting the show,' says Peter Bazalgette, CEO of BB's production company Endemol (which is paying McCall a reputed £500,000 for the new series, making her one of the highest- paid people in TV). 'People identify with her, they feel they could go shopping or go for a pint with her. She's almost like this universal best-mate, big-sister figure.' McCall is noticeably proprietorial about the show. 'I feel like it's my baby, rightly or wrongly,' she says. 'Every year, during the build-up, I get these frissons of excitement. I can't wait.'
She gushes with genuine fervour about watching the contestants doing mundane things: sleeping, chatting, mooching. 'They're my favourite ¼ » bits, not the soapy dramas, the fights or the love-ins. I love seeing their characters emerge, following them as they change and develop. I get to know them as the public do, and when they come out I feel like I'm meeting a celebrity.'
McCall is far from unaware of the claims of BB's detractors that it's been primarily responsible for celebrity Cup-a-Soup culture, reducing the Warholian life span of its own and its collateral progeny - the Jodie Marshes and Rebecca Looses - to 15 spotlit seconds. She'll remark airily that 'the celebrity thing is really disappearing up its own jacksie', while attempting to distance the show from the fallout. 'It may sound bizarre, but I think Big Brother has survived relatively unscathed,' she says. 'OK, I know the likes of John Humphrys think it's responsible for all society's ills, and I love him, but I bet he's never watched it. He's judging it from the tabloid coverage, so, as an intellectual, of course he's going to hate it. He'll think it's all about shagging and fighting, but there's so much more to it than that. It may sometimes get a little extreme,' she concludes, a little flintily, 'but it's never less than fascinating.'
So she didn't think about bailing out this time round? 'Never,' she says emphatically. 'I'll keep doing it for as long as they want me. It still gets my juices going.' There's a vague perception, however, that her continued association with BB has somewhat lowered McCall's stock. It used to be that you couldn't find anyone with a bad word to say about her, and while that's still largely true - 'She's the same as she ever was,' says the make-up artist for the photo-shoot, who's worked with her several times, 'an absolutely genuine person who's got as much time for the lowliest assistant as the more ostensibly important people' - the murmurings have been growing steadier. The scurrilous cyber-gossip website Popbitch claimed that BB bosses had ordered her to lower her less desirable EQ (something she denies, though she was noticeably more composed for the series' last run); she's portrayed on Bo' Selecta! as a shrieking, splay-legged, Tourette's-afflicted harpy (she gamely claims to find the depiction hilarious); and the Mail has recently been needling her for being too thin. McCall released a work-out DVD last year, Power Of 3, which has sold more than a quarter of a million copies, a sign, the Mail claims, that she's been 'working too hard to stay ultra-fashionable and ultra-slim as media commentators suggest that it's time she gives up and makes way for someone hipper, far younger, and more in touch with the in-crowd'.
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