‘I have only fantastic memories of giving birth’

We caught up with the nation’s favourite ‘big mutha’ to talk about parenthood

There was something amiss with Davina McCall when she presented the most recent series of Celebrity Big Brother. Not her trademark giddy enthusiasm – somehow we don’t think that’ll ever dry up – but the presence of a whopping great baby bump. Over the years, Davina, has been pregnant as often as she hasn’t while presenting the reality show, thus earning herself the name Big Mutha in the process.

Womb with a view
Last summer’s series was no exception – the show was even brought forward to accommodate her due date, thus reducing the risk of her waters breaking at the sight of each dysfunctional reject evicted from the house. And baby Chester, Davina’s third child with hubby Matthew Robertson, was very obliging – he waited several weeks longer than expected and finally arrived on 15th September 2006, weighing 10lb 2oz!

‘Can I tell you something? When Matthew and I decided that we might go for another one, I did plan it so I didn’t give birth during Big Brother,’ says Davina, who adores her job so much she says she’d have to have her right arm cut off and the Big Brother torch prised forcefully from her hand before she’d give it to anyone.

Davina, nevertheless, took her birthing bag with her to the studios just in case. As it was, she needn’t have panicked. A month after the series ended, the 39-year-old presenter gave birth to Chester at her six-bedroom country home in Woldingham, Surrey, just as she had done with her other children, daughters Holly, five, and Tilly, three. And, despite their substantial birth weights – Holly was 8lb 12oz, Tilly was 9lb 11oz – and the fact that all three were natural deliveries, Davina is evangelical about the wonders of giving birth. ‘Women go on about the pain and horror of it,’ she says. ‘I want to tell whoever will listen that I loved it and they will, too.’ She even goes as far as to say that the deliveries were ‘orgasmic’. ‘They knocked spots off any drug I’ve ever taken. When those babies popped out, I wanted to stand naked on the highest mountain and roar with pride.’ Alright then!

Home Births
Before she had Holly, Davina met up with a friend who’d had two home births. ‘Her stories were so magical, and just how I wanted my labour to be, so I contacted her midwives, Caroline Flint and Pam Wilde.’

Davina gave birth to Holly in ‘the cosy room where our dogs sleep.’ It took three hours and ‘was utterly exhausting.’ Incredibly, she had no pain relief. ‘I wanted to feel every last gasp of childbirth. I have only fantastic memories of giving birth.’

The pregnancies themselves have less fantastic memories for Davina, though. By her own admission, the normally svelte (and refreshingly unskinny) presenter ‘balloons’ when she’s pregnant. ‘I put on an extraordinary amount of weight and get convinced Matthew will run off with someone else.’

The Heat is on
So with an expectant Davina feeling less than sparkly, how did she really cope with her Big Brother presenting duties, having now been pregnant during series two, four and seven? The adrenaline, she says, kept her going. ‘It was after the show finished when I suddenly thought “I just need to go and lie down for a minute”.’ It seems the main problem was the heat of last year’s summer. ‘I had my little internal radiator on and I got quite hot. But by the evening it cooled down quite a lot and then there was the whole buzz of the eviction event going on, so that really carried me through.’

Unfair Criticism
After Chester was born, his mum took a well-deserved four-month break after a tumultuous year in her professional life. Her much talked about chat show received poor ratings, was savaged by critics and eventually put out of it’s misery. The criticism, she admits, did get to her. ‘I’m not going to lie and say it hasn’t affected me. It was depressing. Members of the public came up to me in the street and would say “Oh God, are you alright?,”’ says Davina, who was paid £35,000 an episode for her eight-week chat show series. ‘But you have to lump it. Sometimes some things aren’t given a chance. I’m really proud of the show I did. I thought it was a fun programme.’

It’s not the first time Davina has received a professional mauling. There was the ill-fated He’s Having A Baby, which failed to compete with prime-time Saturday night competition such as The X Factor, and Sam’s Game, her one foray into the world of sitcom acting and one we don’t imagine she’ll be repeating. Regardless of all this, though, she remains at the top of her game. Thanks to her excitable, big sisterly presenting style, she has, over the years, gone from presenting on MTV to such mainstream hits as Don’t Try This At Home, Popstars: The Rivals, Reborn in the USA, and, of course, Big Brother. It’s all a far cry from her famously drug-addled twenties.

The Early Years
Davina has something of a chequered past, which is quite remarkable when you think what a chirpy, almost wholesome image she has honed these days. ‘If I started on New Year’s Eve, I would be taking drugs non-stop for three days because when I start I just can’t stop,’ she admits. ‘When I was an addict, I just let everybody down and maybe because I did have strong morals and good manners and stuff, that made me hate myself. With a passion. And that’s eventually why I stopped.’

These days, Davina is incredibly clean living – she doesn’t touch a drop of booze, either. ‘I can’t tell you, hand on heart, that if I got drunk at a party and someone said “Would you like a line of coke?” that I wouldn’t think about doing it, and that is too frightening. I’ve got children, I’ve got a life.’

Of course, she’s always had quite a life, just not one as homely and family orientated as she has now. She lived from pillar to post when she was growing up – born in London, she moved in with her grandparents, aged three, when her parents split and neither could cope with her. As a teenager, she moved back to London to live with her father before a stint in Paris, living with her French mother who was something of an eccentric. ‘My mum was a very exciting woman to be around. She’d do really embarrassing things that you wouldn’t dare to do. I used to watch Absolutely Fabulous and think “Gosh that’s me – I’m Saffy and my mum’s Edina,”’ says Davina.

Davina’s square Saffy side was put to one side, though, when she started taking drugs and partying hard. And throughout her twenties, she was to notch up a whole host of life experiences, from singing in a band and working as a model booker and a nightclub hostess in London to running a restaurant and working as a singing waitress in Paris. On the personal front, she had a short-lived marriage to actor Andrew Leggett (“just wrong”) and, before that, a relationship with family friend Eric Clapton. As it turned out, the rock legend was imperative in turning Davina’s life around, expressing concern about her drug habit and encouraging her to apply for a job with MTV. ‘If I hadn’t bombarded MTV with audition tapes and got a job through sheer bloody-mindedness, I’m not sure what would’ve happened to me,’ she says.

Family Life
It’s no wonder that these days Davina is basking in the joys of a happy, stable family life. Understandably, it’s her relationship with her mother, more than anything else, which has shaped her as a parent. ‘My mother was a wild Sixties person. I don’t think she could cope with the responsibility of a child,’ she says. ‘Being a mother myself has made me realise that all the things that make me want to be a great mum are all the things I missed when I was a kid.’

You also get the impression that Davina can’t believe her luck to have met husband Matthew, a former TV presenter himself (he hosted Pet Rescue). ‘Matthew is very romantic and goes out of his way to do little things to make me feel special,’ she says. So what’s their secret to a successful relationship in the notoriously fickle celebrity world? ‘Before we had children

I used to run like a puppy to the front door when I heard Matthew’s key turning and give him a big hug. I still try to remember to run to him when he comes home from work at the end of a long day, but you sometimes forget the little things when you’re tired and you have kids – when they say a relationship is hard work, that’s what they mean. It’s putting the work in to make the other person feel special.’

Davina and Matthew famously met in a scene reminiscent of a Hollywood rom-com, when they bumped in to each other while walking their dogs in a West London park. ‘I went up to him and said “hello” and carried on walking,’ she recalls. ‘I knew I had to talk to him again so I went around the park the opposite way, so we could meet up.’ And it obviously worked a treat! Fifteen months later, Matthew proposed while on a flight to Washington DC and the pair married at the gorgeous Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire in 2000.

The couple have a refreshingly non-showbiz lifestyle. ‘My husband is training to be a mountain leader and teach climbing, mountain biking and kayaking. I’ve been sucked in to that as well because if I don’t do that, I’d never see him. It’s brilliant – we go out like real nerds with our Ordnance Survey map and plan our routes.’

The glitz and glamour of the celebrity world she inhabits clearly don’t appeal to Davina. ‘I did all the wild things in my twenties and now I love being a home bird,’ she says. And, despite the odd professional hiccup, she’s very happy with her lot. ‘Every year seems to be one of my best years. You’re always learning and experiencing something new. I feel quite blessed, really.’

Davina on...

Breastfeeding...
Davina breastfed all three of her children for four months while she was off work. At the National TV Awards, her first public appearance after giving birth for the first time, she came in for some criticism over her outfit: ‘Everyone was talking about the fact I was all covered up in an Amanda Wakeley suit. The reason was, I was breastfeeding and I didn’t want there to be any embarrassing leaks!’

Child Care...
‘I have strict rules about how many days I work, because I want to be there for my family. It’s something I feel very strongly about, perhaps because my own mum wasn’t around when I was a kid,’ she says. ‘There are times when I’ll be working four days a week and absolutely hate it because I won’t see them, then I’ll get a week off… it’s a balance thing. Matthew and I are lucky – he’s training to be an outward-bound instructor so he’s around quite a lot and we share the duties. We have a nanny as well but there’s always a parent about, which alleviates my guilt and makes me feel a bit better.’

Plastic Surgery...
‘I might have a boob job at 40, and I’m not averse to having a “freshen up” in my fifties,’ she says. ‘Having said that, I am an addict so I’d have to be pretty careful – I could look like the Bride of wildenstein quite quickly.’

The Future...
Davina wants to delve even further in to domestic bliss... ‘I want to make room for ponies, Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs, donkey and swings, and have children tugging on my apron strings as I cook a fantastic fish pie.’ And if the telly work ever dries up, she’s got a new career plan: ‘I’ve actually thought that, when I’m surplus to telly requirements, I’d love to be a midwife.’ n