Davina McCall said she feared her fiancé no longer wanted to be with her after brain surgery left her with severe short-term memory problems and left her "losing herself." The 57-year-old television presenter described fighting back tears as she recounted the experience on Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast on Tuesday.
McCall told listeners that medics discovered a "very rare" colloid cyst last November that affects only a handful of people. Surgeons removed the growth after doctors warned it could cause serious problems if it continued to grow. She said the six months following the operation were harder than she had anticipated because her short-term memory was badly affected.
Speaking about her recovery, McCall said the memory lapses led her to fear she had changed in ways those closest to her might not accept. "Michael, who spent the majority of the time with me, I've never seen him struggle with spending time with me, but sometimes... he was telling me sometimes I'd ask him the same thing, like seven times in half an hour," she said. "And he'd have to leave the room for a bit... But I could. It wasn't normal. What was happening wasn't our normal life."
She said those moments made her wonder whether her partner, her hairstylist fiancé Michael Douglas, still wanted to be with her. "I had long-term memory. I could remember... and I thought, 'Oh, he doesn't want to be with me,'" she said. After a conversation in which he reassured her, she said she felt huge relief. "He said, 'What are you talking about? I love you, of course I want to be with you.' He said, 'You're actually just a bit annoying at the moment.' And I laughed so hard with relief. I was so relieved to find out that it was a thing that will get better.'"
McCall described the internal struggle to make sense of who she was after the operation. "I knew I was still in there. And sometimes I just wanted to shout, 'Please remember me. I'm still here. I'm trying to get back to you but I don't know how to do it. Wait for me. I promise you, I'm not going to be this annoying forever,'" she said on the podcast.
She said she had prepared for the surgery itself but underestimated the scope and duration of the recovery. "I did very well in approaching the operation and the lead-up to the operation and going to sleep, but I just thought life would go back to normal quite quickly, and I didn't go back to normal," McCall said. "I didn't understand, and people had said your short-term memory might be affected, but I just didn't really get what that meant. I just thought I wouldn't remember what I'd just done. But I wasn't aware that my memory was so bad."
McCall and Douglas went public with their relationship in 2018. By January 2023, he had moved in with the presenter. The couple’s engagement was reported this month; a friend told The Sun that McCall had a ring but was wearing it only in private. McCall has three children — Holly, Tilly and Chester — with her ex-husband, Matthew Robertson.
Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast publishes new episodes weekly. McCall did not provide a medical timeline beyond her description of the discovery and subsequent surgery.