[Amy]

Interview with Big Brother presenter DAVINA McCALL

To some, the onset of summer is marked by cricket on village greens, cream teas and cucumber sandwiches, and outdooor performances of La Traviata. But for those of us who don’t inhabit a PG Wodehouse novel, the summer’s arrival is heralded by some of that season’s reassuring staples: Bald men with sunburnt heads, the sexes leering at each other’s uncovered body parts, and young children clutching an empty cornet and weeping as their raspberry ripple slowly melts into the tarmac.

And then there’s Big Brother. In five years, the most talked about show on television has become a summer staple like no other programme. If Davina McCall is getting excited about the new series of Big Brother (and boy, is she excited!), you can guarantee that the hot weather is just around the corner.

Not that you’d know it today. The windows of the south London photo studio where McCall is shooting her Big Brother publicity stills are gently pattering with the delicate rhythm of what can only be described as horizontal rain driven by hurricane-force winds. Despite this, Davina McCall’s disposition is sufficiently sunny to dispel all vestiges of gloom, as she bounces in looking unfeasibly cheerful and promising "to be gentle with me".

She’s happy for two reasons that I can work out. Firstly, it seems to be her natural state of being (and you thought it was just an act for the cameras), and secondly, because she’s about to resume her love affair with all things Big Brother. Since presenting the first series in 1999, McCall’s name has become synonymous with the show, and her celebrity status has rocketed accordingly. She readily acknowledges that she has much to thank Big Brother for, but that’s not behind her affection for it. This is a deeper, purer relationship than one of expedience – this is true love.

If Davina wasn’t presenting Big Brother, she’d be one of those enthusiastic, faintly unsettling types in the crowd on eviction night, waving a home-made banner and screaming excitedly. That she gets paid to turn up, and gets to meet the housemates, and ask them questions, is almost too good to be true. Her response, when I ask if she’d be ready to pass on the Big Brother torch to someone else, is telling:

"No. Definitely not. They’d have to cut off my right arm and prise the torch forcefully from my hand before I’d give it to anyone."

Fortunately, such an event seems unlikely to happen anytime soon, for just as Davina needs Big Brother, so the show depends on her fan-like enthusiasm, her chemistry with the housemates, and her all-round, jolly-hockey-sticks bonhomie.

With a handsome, outdoorsy husband, two young daughters, and a comfortable, rural lifestyle south of London, it’s not difficult to see where her upbeat nature comes from, but I am dimly aware, from my research, that McCall’s life is tinged with sorrow. Not one to shirk the difficult questions, I resolve to open with it, to see the real Davina, to understand her pain.

"You’re not allowed to keep pot-bellied pigs, are you?"

Just for a second, she winces, before the mask comes down. "No. I still don’t have any. It’s entirely down to my husband. It’s been vetoed. The point of a pot-bellied pig is that they are house pets – it’s not a garden thing. They are tame, they’re house-trained, they go out to the garden for wees and everything. But he couldn’t get his head around having a pig in the house, so it’s been vetoed. And unless I go out with George Clooney, who once kept a pig called Max, sadly deceased, then it’s never going to happen."

So there you have it: Davina McCall is the only woman in the world who would like to date George Clooney in memory of his pig!

She’s a born performer, and started out by trying to make it as a pop star. She made a record, but says it wasn’t meant to be. "I can roughly sing in tune, but to be absolutely honest, my voice was by no means different enough to warrant being a singer. One of the great things about Celine Dion – love her or loathe her – is that you know who it is the minute you hear her. Same with Mariah Carey or Joss Stone. They’ve got a really distinctive sound, and that’s what I didn’t have."

Instead, TV beckoned, and with her natural good looks and easy charm, she quickly won a following presenting shows such as Don’t Try This at Home and the incomparable Streetmate. I tell her I miss the dating show in which she would match up random punters on the street, and she confesses that she loved the show. She’s as soppy as they come, and used to love it when matches worked. I allude to one specific participant, and she immediately gives me his name, his date’s name, and the town they were from (all correct). Thus, it is with heavy heart that I inform her that the participant in question lied about his single status – indeed, he was dating a friend of mine until she saw him taking out another woman on the telly.

"No!" she shrieks, genuinely scandalised. "He had a girlfriend! God forbid that I see that man again. That makes me so angry. It just makes it a complete waste of time. For me, the only reason I’m doing it is because I think that somebody might actually get together. That excitement, and the possibility of true romance coming out of it was just brilliant."

True romance arrived in McCall’s life in the form of a man she met walking his dog in a London park, and went on to marry. They have two girls, aged three and one, who the nation watched growing, it seemed by the day, inside Davina during Big Brother series two and four. Family life is now her main priority, superseding even the treasured Big Brother. "I hang out with them as much as I can. My husband has just had a complete career change, and is training to be a mountain leader and teach climbing, mountain biking and kayaking. I’ve been sucked into that as well, because if I don’t do that, I never see him. It’s brilliant – we go out like real nerds with our Ordinance Survey map and plan our routes and everything." Ah, the glamour of showbiz!

Between family life and presenting, she’s also become a passionate advocate of Comic Relief, which she says has changed her life completely. "It’s changed my views and outlook towards other people, and hopefully has made me less selfish and less self-absorbed. Once you’ve seen the utter, utter, abject poverty in the world, it puts the routine problems of one’s own life into some sort of perspective.

"Before I went out to Africa to film for Comic Relief, I’d never seen poverty like that. I’d have nice holidays abroad where I’d never see real, grinding poverty. And I think once you’ve seen it, and seen it first-hand, you’re aware that it’s always going on; it’s not going away when you leave. As I’m flying back relaxing on some lovely plane, there are still people living their lives in slums.

"It’s the one good thing about celebrity. Well, there are lots of good things, like being able to get a table at The Ivy," she winks, "but the really good thing about being a celebrity is that you’re able to affiliate your name to a cause and get a message across to people. That’s an amazingly intense thing to be able to do, and I try to do that with issues I really care about."

The bills still need paying, though, and for the next few months, it’s back to Big Brother. What, I wonder, are her favourite moments from previous series? It’s a question she’s doubtless been asked every five minutes for the last six years, but far from being jaded (no Big Brother pun intended) she can’t seem to rein herself in to just the hundred-odd favourite moments.

There’s talk of Paul and Helen falling in love, Kate falling over drunk, the saintly Cameron finally losing his temper, Nasty Nick’s unmasking, an intimate conversation between Brian and Narinder, the rich and poor divide – basically everything that was ever shown on camera… and more.

"One of my favourite moments wasn’t on camera. It was in series one, and I was rehearsing a piece in the diary room. I’d left the house, and the director said into my earpiece: ‘Er, Davina, have you got your phone with you?’ And I’d left it in the diary room. The housemates had got hold of it – thank God it wasn’t switched on – and they were all looking at it in awe, going ‘It’s a phone!’ They were all terrified by the sudden arrival of this piece of equipment. ‘What do we do with it?’ ‘Shall we take it?’ ‘Nooo!’ It was just a phone! Anyway, Big Brother asked them to return it."

Another favourite moment – when Craig gave his winner’s money to his friend Joanne to pay for an operation – literally brings Davina out in goose bumps. I worry she’s about to cry, though fortunately, the moment passes (the photographer waiting downstairs would never forgive me if Davina emerged puffy-eyed, all streaked mascara and snotty nosed).

"I also loved it every time Nadia got angry. I know that’s an awful thing to say, but she was so fiery and passionate and Mediterranean, and I love that. I love somebody who just says ‘I am who I am, take it or leave it. I don’t mind if you see me angry, or if you see me crying."

For those who really have been inhabiting a PG Wodehouse novel for the last year, Nadia was the wildly popular transsexual who won last summer’s Big Brother at a stiletto-clad canter. Does McCall think the choice of winner says something about our society?

"Just look at who’s won in the past. The first series was Craig, but it was nearly Anna [the Lesbian former nun]. The second year, Brian, who was gay. The third year was Kate, then next was Cameron, who was devoutly religious. Now who would’ve thought that Cameron would win it one year, and the next year, a transsexual female would win? It’s not as if there’s a theme developing. We’re just going for the person that we love the most. That’s what I love about the Brits – it doesn’t matter who you are, what you look like, what you represent, what you’ve been, what you’ve done. If we love you, we love you."

Does she know anything about this year’s show? "Yes, I do. I know little bits about the kind of tasks, and the kind of atmosphere that the housemates are going to be living in, and it’s going to be brilliant. I can’t tell you any more than that, but it’s going to be absolutely fantastic. I couldn’t believe what they came up with. They keep producing these brilliant ideas from nowhere. Honestly, completely seriously, this year’s show is going to be brilliant."

And you can be sure she means it.

Outside, the rain has stopped, and shafts of sunlight are beginning to emerge from behind the clouds. The promise of summer is in the air, and Big Brother is almost with us.