Davina McCall

Davina Lucy Pascale McCall (born 16 October 1967) is an English television presenter. She has presented various television shows for Channel 4, including Streetmate (1998–2001, 2016), Big Brother (2000–2010), The Million Pound Drop (2010–2015), Five Minutes to a Fortune (2013), and The Jump (2014–2017), as well as the ITV shows The Biggest Loser (2011–2012), Long Lost Family (2011–present), and This Time Next Year (2016–2019). McCall was a regular co-presenter of the Comic Relief annual telethons from 2005 to 2015. Since 2020, she has been a judge on the ITV singing competition show The Masked Singer.

McCall was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to broadcasting. She received the Special Recognition award at the 29th National Television Awards in 2024.

Davina Lucy Pascale McCall was born on 16 October 1967 in Wimbledon, London, to a French mother, Florence (née Hennion) and an English father, Andrew McCall, a graphic designer and events organiser for Portsmouth Harbour Authority. At the age of three she went to live with her paternal grandparents in Surrey after the break-up of her parents' marriage. Her mother Florence—whom McCall has described as "chaotic" and later, specifically as "an alcoholic"—returned to France, and McCall saw her only on holidays.

McCall attended St Catherine's School, Bramley near Guildford, Surrey and Godolphin and Latymer Girls School, a private school in Hammersmith, West London. At secondary level, McCall studied for nine O levels and two A levels.

McCall's first career was as a singer, and she had been performing in a band, Lazy Bear, while at school. By the age of 19, she had decided to pursue a professional career as a solo classical artist, and briefly started classical vocal coaching.

Dissatisfied with her lack of success in the music industry, McCall gave up singing and took a job at Models 1 on the men's desk as a booker. Later she ran a restaurant for two years before a brief spell in Paris as a Moulin Rouge-style cabaret performer. On her return to London she worked on the nightclub scene as a hostess. Work in this period included an appearance as a dancer in the video for the 1991 Kylie Minogue single "Word Is Out".

In 1994, McCall was hired as a presenter on Ray Cokes' Most Wanted on MTV Europe. She presented Hitlist UK. In 1995, she went on to host the ITV late night game show God's Gift.

In 1998, McCall hosted the cult dating show Streetmate, in which she toured the country meeting single people and matching them up. It originally ran on Channel 4 from 1998 to 2001.