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Davina McCall reveals heartbreaking way her life will ‘never be the same’ following brain surgery

Home> Entertainment> Celebrity

Updated 08:44 6 Feb 2025 GMTPublished 08:39 6 Feb 2025 GMT

Davina McCall reveals heartbreaking way her life will ‘never be the same’ following brain surgery

Former Big Brother presenter Davina McCall emotionally reflected on her brain tumour operation

Joshua Nair

Joshua Nair

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Davina McCall has spoken about the drastic changes that she will have to face following her brain surgery.

In November last year, the former Big Brother host told fans she had a benign brain tumour known as a 'colloid cyst', a rare condition that required urgent surgery.

Speaking on Instagram, she said the health condition was found in 'three in a million' and that from the advice from neurosurgeons she saw, it must be taken out before 'it grows'.

Following the operation to take the 14mm cyst out, her partner Michael Douglas took to social media to share that the procedure was 'textbook' and that she was recovering.

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The TV presenter has now got back into the swing of things, having uploaded an episode of her podcast, Begin Again, every week following her operation.

In an episode that was uploaded today (6 February), The Masked Singer judge welcomed podcast titan Steven Bartlett on, where she made a heartbreaking admission about her future.

McCall revealed that she's changed her Will and it will now include emotional letters to her children that she penned prior to her operation, as she thought she might have died.

"I'm grateful. Life will never be the same again, but in rather a good way," she said of her family, adding how proud she was of them.

Bartlett took over as host for the episode, with McCall in the hot seat.

Davina McCall made some candid admissions about the operation (Instagram/@beginagain)
Davina McCall made some candid admissions about the operation (Instagram/@beginagain)

McCall opened up about 'a life lived in fear' being a life that's 'half-lived', explaining that she wrote a bucket list with her sister that they never did, as she passed away before they had the chance.

"Why are we doing bucket lists when we're dying? Write the bucket list now, in your thirties, and go, 'What is my bucket list? Like, what do I want to do before I die?' And let's start doing it now," the TV presenter said.

McCall revealed that she made the decision to have the operation as soon as possible, instead of waiting until it got worse.

"There were a lot of things that could be a risk. And obviously, because of my age, you know, I'm fifty-seven," she pointed out.

The TV presenter was back in the gym in January (Instagram/@davinamccall)
The TV presenter was back in the gym in January (Instagram/@davinamccall)

McCall added: "I was thinking, 'Would you rather have brain surgery now, or if it grew in eight years' time, would you want to have it in your mid-to-late sixties?"

"I talked to Michael about my wishes. I wrote letters of wishes to all the children and put those in my will," she explained, saying that she went into the operation believing 'everything will be okay', regardless of the outcome.

Speaking about her future with her children and potential grandchildren, the 57-year-old admitted: "Those are the kinds of things that I would feel sad about. But what I was trying to not do is think about things that I would miss if I didn't make it."

She said that she knew her three children would be okay as they are 'robust', adding: "It's amazing. But through this... it has made me immensely proud of all of them."

McCall told Bartlett that she had set up a WhatsApp group for family and close friends so they would know about the outcome of her operation before the media.

She explained: "Do you know what I was thinking when I made the WhatsApp group, is who do I... if something bad happened, who do I not want to hear it from a paper?

"So, I was kind of thinking, in a way, I want them to hear good things. Who do I want to hear the news first before anybody else gets it? And that was my list of people."

"It's not changed me forever, but I've learned things about myself that I would never have learned without this operation or without the cyst," the TV icon stated, adding that it was 'one of the greatest blessings' she'd had in her life.

Sharing her recovery journey with followers online, she revealed that she's been back putting in the hard hours at the gym this year.

Featured Image Credit: Lia Toby/Getty Images for the NTA's

Topics: Celebrity, Health

Joshua Nair
Joshua Nair

Joshua Nair is a journalist at LADbible. Born in Malaysia and raised in Dubai, he has always been interested in writing about a range of subjects, from sports to trending pop culture news. After graduating from Oxford Brookes University with a BA in Media, Journalism and Publishing, he got a job freelance writing for SPORTbible while working in marketing before landing a full-time role at LADbible. Unfortunately, he's unhealthily obsessed with Manchester United, which takes its toll on his mental and physical health. Daily.

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@joshnair10

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