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DAVINA'S PAIN
My menopause was like coming off heroin, I felt old, dried up and revolting, says Davina McCall
TO look at Davina McCall, you’d be forgiven for thinking she’s in her early 30s – her brunette bob is glossy, her skin tanned, her body toned, plus she’s bouncing around like the Duracell bunny.
But 10 years ago, Davina, now 54, definitely didn’t feel like this – her skin was like crepe paper, her hair was dull, she was waking up drenched in sweat and her memory was so bad she was struggling to do her job.
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She was terrified that there was something properly wrong with her. It never crossed her mind that she could be perimenopausal.
“I know it sounds really naive, but I didn’t know what it was,” she says.
“I was 44, but looking back, there might have been symptoms before that. Maybe a bit of low-level anxiety.
“If you gave me any live TV job, I’d think: ‘I’ve done this 1,000 times before. I know what I’m doing.’
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“But then suddenly it was: ‘Wow, I’m a bit nervous,’ and this feeling of: ‘I just don’t feel like myself at the moment.’”
It wasn’t just her work life that suffered. Having always tried to avoid being a “shouty Mummy”, Davina was devastated when she erupted at her three children, Holly, 20, Tilly, 18, and Chester, 15, who she shares with ex-husband Matthew Robertson.
“I remember just breaking down and putting my head on the steering wheel in the car and having a little cry.
“I said: ‘This isn’t Mummy. I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m really sorry. Let’s go to school.’”
Davina then had to deal with night sweats, which transported her back to battling heroin addiction in her early 20s.
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“One of the greatest things about getting clean off heroin was that I never woke up in wet sheets again. It didn’t matter how bad life got, it was never as bad as when I was taking heroin.
“It’s a soggy, sweaty prison. You’re in a constant state of either: ‘I’ve got to try and find it,’ or: ‘I’m weaning myself off it and I feel terrible.’
“When I stopped, I remember waking up in dry sheets for a week in a row and just thinking: ‘This is the best feeling in the world.’
“For me still, 30 years on, I wake up with my head on a crisp, clean, dry pillow, and it’s great.
“So when I woke up on a Garnier shoot in Prague in 2012 with a wet pillow, and the sheet was so wet underneath me that I had to get a towel, I thought: ‘What the f**k is going on?’ I felt revolting.
“My skin looked terrible because I’d sweated so much. I was so dehydrated. But because it wasn’t regular hot flashes, [menopause] didn’t even enter my mind.”
Even more terrifying was the way words seemed to fall out of her head. Brain fog left her panicked she was getting Alzheimer’s, which her dad Andrew suffered from before his death earlier this year.
She admits: “It was so weird and frightening. I was doing this show with celebrities who I’d grown up with. I’d just look at them and think: ‘I can’t remember their names.’
“I’d have said their name on the autocue 10 minutes before, and then it’s gone. I’d think: ‘Oh my god, how am I going to continue doing this job?’
“It wasn’t even just names, it was happening all the time. Looking outside and thinking: ‘What’s the name for a big expanse of grass?’
“I couldn’t find the word ‘lawn’. It was so frustrating and a frightening time for somebody like me who’s very proud. You don’t tell people – and that’s a very lonely place to be.”
Having finally realised what was going on, after a conversation with her cousin, Davina spent years resisting medical help due to embarrassment. And when she finally did take HRT at 47 for her symptoms, she lied about it to her friends.
FABULOUS MENOPAUSE MATTERS
Last October, Fabulous launched our Menopause Matters campaign to support our readers who were suffering in silence.
Fronted by Lisa Snowdon and backed by celebs like Zoe Hardman, Trisha Goddard and, of course, Davina, it aimed to make HRT free through the NHS and to put a menopause policy in every workplace.
Just weeks later, the government pledged to cut the annual cost of repeat HRT prescriptions to £18.70 (a saving of up to £205 a year), while companies like pub chain Young’s and Estée Lauder pledged support for staff.
In June, Menopause Matters was awarded Campaign of the Year at the British Society of Magazine Editors Awards 2022.
But our work isn’t done – we’ll continue speaking out until the taboo surrounding the menopause has been smashed for good.
“I’m a recovering addict, I haven’t had a drink in 30 years. I thought I was weak [taking HRT]. I’d had three drug-free home births – and I wouldn’t even take Nurofen.
“I prided myself in doing everything the natural way. I felt like I was less of a kind of female warrior if I went down ‘the weak route’.
“Then someone pointed out to me that I had taken the Pill and I take thyroxine because I’ve got hypothyroidism, so why am I making a big fuss?
“That’s a hormone! So if I’ve got low oestrogen and progesterone, why am I so funny about taking that?
“But I really believed people would think my decision to take HRT was some kind of vanity.
“There was a perception that women who took HRT were chasing youth, when you should be growing old gracefully. But it’s got nothing to do with that.
“I felt so ashamed and it’s hard to find the words to describe why I felt unable to tell friends. I felt old, I felt dried-up.
“I had friends who seemed so happy in their lives, coping with everything and I felt I couldn’t talk to them.
“What I realise now is that if you give it a bit of time, get the hormones settled or find whatever works for you, it does come back. I’m kickass again!”
Following on from her two Channel 4 documentaries, Davina’s spreading the message further with the launch of her new book, Menopausing, to stop other women feeling confused, ashamed or afraid like she was.
“I was worried about making the first documentary, Sex, Myths And The Menopause, but it has changed a lot and got the message to a really broad audience,” she admits.
“In the past, I felt it was a women’s thing. But so many men watched with their partners and had a better understanding of their partners.
I felt so ashamed and it’s hard to find the words to describe why I felt unable to tell friends. I felt old, I felt dried-up.
“Then there were so many questions, we had to do another one. I think we could do even more and focus on men, because there is still so much to discuss.”
As if on cue, the 50-something male studio manager at the location where we are doing our photo shoot interrupts.
“I never do this,” he says. “Davina, I just have to say: ‘Thank you’. I watched that documentary and you saved my marriage. I had no idea what had happened to my wife – she was like a different person. And now I can understand what she is going through.”
“He’s nearly crying, Davina’s nearly crying, I’m nearly crying. It explains why Davina, who is already one of the most in-demand TV personalities, with Big Brother, Long Lost Family and The Masked Singer under her belt, is happy to shift her priorities to her “menopause mission”.
“This is rapidly becoming my life’s work,” she says defiantly. “People can go: ‘It’s just celebrities using their celebrity to ingratiate themselves to women,’ but I don’t need more celebrity – I’ve been on telly for 30 years.
“None of the women like Meg Mathews, Lorraine Kelly and Mariella Frostrup who do anything in this sphere want to make money out of it.
“I don’t want to do menopause vitamins, I just want to get information out there.
“And a book is like a brilliant way of doing it, because it’s a piece of solid information.”
It’s clear how buoyed up Davina is about helping women. She’s protested in Parliament Square and supported Fabulous’ award-winning Menopause Matters campaign to make HRT available for free.
“I am part of it,” she says proudly. “We are making political change and doing it together – and that’s really exciting. It’s a tsunami of saying: ‘Enough is enough’.
“These HRT shortages [due to increased demand] are not OK. It’s unforgivable. Airports taking it off women [some countries require a prescription to carry medicine] is incredibly shaming.
“We have to change stuff, we are 51% of the nation. We deserve better.”
People can go: ‘It’s just celebrities using their celebrity to ingratiate themselves to women,’ but I don’t need more celebrity – I’ve been on telly for 30 years.
Typically for Davina, her new book is not for the faint-hearted – nothing is off limits.
“Over the past 15 years, my PR has always joked: ‘Don’t say vagina,’ and I would crowbar it into interviews to annoy him. Then this became my passion and to get the information out, I need to say it ad infinitum,” she laughs.
“Obviously I’m not going to be talking about dry vaginas all the time, but to feel dry down there is one of the most debilitating and embarrassing symptoms of all.
“I’ve met women who couldn’t sit down because they were in such agony. I’ve had a sore fanny from trying to wipe myself after going to the toilet – I’m sorry if this is TMI.
“I felt spectacularly unattractive with my sweaty nights, my sore vagina and my dry skin. None of this made me feel sexy. But when I took HRT, it went – so there is a relatively easy fix.”
Watching Davina strut around in a cocktail dress while her boyfriend of three years, hairdresser Michael Douglas, 48, looks on proudly, it’s hard to imagine she ever felt less than 100% sexy. But she says getting her mojo back has been thanks to HRT.
“I couldn’t say it’s helped my relationship with Michael, because I was on HRT before we got together, but definitely everything else.
“My relationship with my kids is better. They know you’re not this person, so it’s a bit worrying for them.
“But if I explain what’s going on then at least they can go: ‘Oh, it’s that thing.’ They were very sweet about it. My kids are now menopause experts.
“I’m honest with my friends now, too. They were so nice when I said: ‘I was ashamed to tell you.’ My relationship with my job is better. I would not be doing it [without HRT].
“I would have just disappeared, because of this belief that I couldn’t do it any more. It would have ruined my confidence and then I wouldn’t have wanted to go for jobs.
“Now I’m ballsy. I’m so different. It is like being reborn.”
I felt spectacularly unattractive with my sweaty nights, my sore vagina and my dry skin. None of this made me feel sexy. But when I took HRT, it went – so there is a relatively easy fix.
Friends for 20 years, Davina and Michael fell in love after her split from her second husband, Pet Rescue presenter Matthew, in 2017.
The hairdresser is so supportive of Davina’s menopause crusade that he now holds masterclasses to help women struggling with menopausal hair.
And while Davina has an agreement with her boyfriend that they never discuss their relationship publicly, it’s impossible for her to hide how proud she is.
“Men need to understand how much it means to us when they support us,” she says. “When Michael does a hair clinic and solves people’s problems, I always watch.
“When he talks to somebody about how to help menopausal hair because he’s learned lots about it, it always makes me feel a bit weepy.
“I feel so grateful that he’s there supporting other women. It doesn’t take a lot for us to really love our men folk for doing something proactive to help support us in this time.
“Men need to know how much it means to us and how much we love them if they help.”
Davina has always been known as the keep-fit queen, but how did she cope with the dreaded menopausal middle-age spread?
“I definitely have had moments. I hurt my ankle [last November], so that was 12 weeks of no exercise. I got really depressed about it, then trying to start again was like: ‘I can’t be arsed.’
“But I know I have to push myself to do it. I used to be able to up the exercise and the weight would just fall off, but that doesn’t happen any more, so I religiously follow dieticians’ advice, too,” she says.
“Doing any kind of exercise is 100% going to boost your confidence. It’s really good for menopause symptoms. It’s been my key to confidence.
“I’m 54, but I think I look better than I did. Though it’s not about what you look like on the outside, it’s feeling confident inside. Generally, I feel more confident than I did in my 40s.”
Career-wise, there’s one question on everyone’s lips – whether or not Davina will be returning for ITV’s recently announced and highly anticipated Big Brother reboot.
“I am definitely not doing it,” she says. “I don’t know who it’s going to be, but it’s going to be exciting. I think they will keep Marcus [Bentley, who did the voiceover]. His voice is so Big Brother, and they’ve kept the eye [logo], but it’s got to change radically.”
Instead, Davina is busy on the new series of ITV’s The Masked Dancer alongside Jonathan Ross, Oti Mabuse and new panellist Peter Crouch.
She says: “I can’t really name another TV programme that entertains five year olds and 80 year olds as much. The judges do a dance sequence – Peter was doing the robot while I was dancing with five hot guys and living my best life.
“Oti’s been texting me in the middle of the night, going: ‘I was just up thinking, could it be blah-blah?’ I love that me and Oti are buds.”
Davina will also have the tissues ready as she returns as the host of The Sun’s Who Cares Wins Awards next Sunday on Channel 4.
The annual celebration of health heroes was launched by the late Dame Deborah James earlier this year.
“It’s an incredibly moving event and there are people in the NHS doing amazing things. We’re going to honour Deborah [who died from bowel cancer in June], which will be really special.
“Everything that came out of her mouth was real, but she also brought a touch of sparkle. I miss her energy.
“She’s left an enormous hole, so I’m really pleased to be able to honour her, because no one deserves it more than her.”
As for her menopause mission, Davina has no intention of stopping any time soon.
“We’ve got to just keep talking about it, because every time I think: ‘Oh, everybody knows this stuff’ – they don’t know,” she says.
“Let’s get out there, keep spreading the word and supporting each other. Let’s not judge anyone for how they do menopause – that’s the most important thing.
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“Life is too short for women to judge other women for the way they’re dealing with life. No one knows what’s going on behind the scenes, so let’s all be lovely to each other.”
- Menopausing: The Positive Roadmap To Your Second Spring by Davina McCall and Dr Naomi Potter (£22, HQ) is out Thursday.
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