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I'm looking forward to our first family Christmas," says Davina McCall, the bubbly presenter of the UK version of Big Brother. "Then I shall work a little bit next year – if I am lucky." If she's lucky...? If British TV had a yearbook, Davina would be listed under most popular girl.
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She presented no fewer than three top programmes in 2000 and graduated to acting with Sam's Game, a Friends-style TV sitcom. What with all that, a new husband and a baby girl Holly Willow, Davina's going from strength to strength. Things weren't always so rosy for the TV star, however.
British beauty Davina was born on October 19, 1967. At age three she went to live with her grandparents in their Surrey home as her parents' marriage dissolved. Her French mum Florence – whom Davina has described as something of a "wild child" – returned to Paris, and Davina would see her only on holidays. She continued to see her father Andrew, a graphic designer, at the weekends before moving in with him and his new wife Gaby when she was 13.
Part of Davina's sunny disposition – one of her greatest assets as a TV presenter – stems from overcoming her fractured childhood and turbulent teens, during which, desperate for attention, she developed the eating disorder anorexia. After a failed attempt at a Moulin Rouge cabaret turn in Paris, she returned to London where she quickly became a fixture on the club scene.
"I was a drug addict, a complete mess," she says of her early 20s. "You name it, I took it. Cocaine, ecstasy, even heroin – although I never injected... I had a job so I looked like I was holding everything together. But then the cracks started to show. I began letting people down and turning up late for work."
Family friend Eric Clapton helped turn things around for Davina and she landed her own show on MTV. A brief failed marriage to actor Andrew Leggett followed in 1997, but with her new-found self-confidence, the Don't Try This At Home presenter bounced back to land both a series of enviable jobs and her prince charming.
Her chance meeting with now-husband Matthew Robertson is like something out of her show Streetwise – the programme in which she grabs unsuspecting people off the street and convinces them to go on dates with complete strangers. While walking her dog in a west London park, she spotted Pet Rescue presenter and former model Matthew and said hello. Determined to act on the spark she felt, Davina doubled back and struck up a conversation. The two were married a year and a half later and welcomed their first child in September 2001.
The sequel to Big Brother ended in July 2001. "I knew it was really, really popular when my granny told me she watched it, and was addicted," says Davina. "When your granny is interested, you know you're on to a winner."
But it wasn't just Nasty Nick and co that got Gran and everyone else in the UK hooked – its happy-go-lucky presenter played an integral part in its success. In 2003 she was chosen to co-host ITV's Love On A Saturday Night which replaces the long-running Blind Date show.
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