Davina McCall not afraid of dying
Davina McCall is not afraid of dying after undergoing an operation to remove a benign brain tumour last year.
Davina McCall is not afraid of dying after undergoing an operation to remove a brain tumour.
The 57-year-old presenter had surgery in 2024 to remove the "very rare" 14mm benign tumour, known as a colloid cyst, which was discovered during a health scan when she gave a talk for a menopause company.
Davina told Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place podcast: “I am not afraid of dying anymore and it was the biggest journey of my life. From August 23 to November 24 was an amazing time where something changed.
“Begin Again, the podcast I started to help other people on their journey of living a life that they love enough to feel on their deathbed, whenever that may be, that I have no regrets.
“I have lived the life I wanted, and I’m not lying there going, ‘I wish I’d done that thing, wish I’d done that job, I wish I’d not stayed in this relationship’, all of those I haven’t lived the life I want (things), and Begin Again is about just begin again and live the life you want.”
And, she insisted her only worries about death were how her children would cope.
She said: “I thought I need to get my brain in the right place and that was to a place where I could be calm, and what did I need to do to do that? Were my kids going to be okay if I didn’t make it? That’s all I really cared about.
“I knew Michael (Douglas, her partner), Michael’s a whole person, Michael’s Michael, but I was really worried about my kids.
“I went forensic on thinking about my children and where they were at in their life, what stage they were at. You’re only as happy as your unhappiest child, right?
“I came to a realisation after about six months of cross-examining them about their life and telling them the whole time how much I’ve loved my life. My eldest daughter kept caught on. She was like, ‘you are not dying’, I was like, ‘no, no, no’, I realised that they would be great.
“They’d miss me and I want to be with them but they would be okay. I felt like I could go to sleep on the operating table and know that they were all here to help me, but I can let go of the outcome and it was the best gift. I am not afraid of dying.”
Davina shares children Holly, Tilly and Chester with her ex-husband Matthew Robinson, who she split from in 2017.
