Davina McCall to step back from full-time work following breast cancer diagnosis
After undergoing a breast cancer and a brain tumour surgery within a year, Davina McCall is to step back from full-time work to "de-stress" her life.
Davina McCall is stepping back from her full-time work after being diagnosed with breast cancer.
The Masked Singer panellist, 58, announced in November 2025 she had undergone surgery to remove a cancerous lump from her breast - which had not spread as it was caught early - and Davina has now said the health scare has served as a wake-up call.
During an appearance on the Miss Me? podcast, she said: “I'm going to work a four-day week.
“I feel so much better now about my life and trying to get it more balanced.
“So now, really, as I hit this stage of my life, I want to take more care of myself. That is my latest project: me, because I can't take care of anyone else if I'm not okay.”
Davina added she had spent “all [her] life” running away from change.
She explained: “Change is something that all my life, I spent running away from.
“I absolutely hated it. Change was something that really frightened me. I always loved the status quo, knowing what I was doing and feeling safe in that.
“What has happened, actually, is that I have realised that all my really big growth has come from change – and often quite painful change.”
Just a year before her cancer diagnosis, Davina announced she would be undergoing surgery to remove a “benign brain tumour”.
Davina said all of her health issues - including her previous addictions to alcohol and drugs - had served as “breakthroughs” in her mind.
She said: “I had an amazing breakthrough when I got clean in the early nineties.
“I had another huge breakthrough after I had my brain tumour removed. I realised that I needed to de-stress my life.
“Interestingly, I realised that - but then the breast cancer, which I thought was a very, very frightening thing, made me realise that I really, really had to put that into place. And I have now.”
At the time of her brain tumour surgery, Davina explained it was a “very rare” 14mm tumour known as a colloid cyst, and so she would be taking some time “off grid” to recover.
She said in an Instagram video: “Hi, so I’m posting this it will be Friday (15.11.24) morning. I’m posting it because a few months ago I did a menopause talk for a company and they offered me a health scan in return, which I thought I was going to ace, but it turned out I had a benign brain tumour called a colloid cyst, which is very rare.
“Three in a million! So I slightly put my head in the sand for a while, and then I saw quite a few neurosurgeons, I got lots of opinions. I realised that I have to get it taken out. It’s big for the space – it fills the space. It’s 14mm wide. And it needs to come out because if it grows it would be bad.”
