Red woman WHAT DID DAVINEXTNA Last October, Davina McCall turned 50. Then she announced she was separating from her husband of 17 years. But guess what? The TV presenter-turned-fitness goddess says she’s never looked or felt better. Laura Craik finds out why £200.50, PINKY RING, LEVY. DANA £49, ALL DINNY HALL. MIDDLE RING, £250, FROM BRACELETS, GOLDSIGN. £425, JEANS, KLEIN JEANS. CALVIN £80, SHIRT, PAGE: OPPOSITE ANNOUSHKA. £450, NECKLACE, AS BEFORE. JEANS, THREE GRACES. £202, BIKINI TOP, NET A PORTER. AT SCHOULER PROENZA CARDIGAN, £820, THE POMMIER. THIS PAGE: EMMA KOTCH MAKE-UP: HAIR: MICHAEL DOUGLAS. AS BEFORE. JEWELLERY, ALL OTHER ADORE. £59, RING, £225, DINNY HALL. SQUARE SEEN), FROM (JUST NECKLACE Photography DAVID GUBERT Styling NICOLA ROSE 38 REDONLINE.CO.UK JUNE 2018 o you mind if I put my teeth in?’ As opening gambits go, it’s strong. Who knew that Davina McCall wore dentures? But just as I’m wondering why the tabloids haven’t picked up on ‘Poor Toothless ‘ Davina’ as a worthy successor to ‘Poor Jen’, she brandishes a crescent of gleaming clear plastic tooth moulds. ‘I’ve had my Invises off,’ she says, explaining that she recently had Invisalign braces fitted. ‘It was either that or a tit job.’ ‘I’M PROBABLY And there she is: Relatable Davina, conveying the very essence of her brand, her likeability and her success in one tidy soundbite. Immediately you’re drawn in. THE HAPPIEST She’s just like me, you think – a middle-aged woman hankering after self-improvement. To further emphasise WITH MY BODY her down-to-earthness, she’s wearing exercise gear – a grey vest, grey leggings and doughty blue trainers – THAT I EVER having run to the ITV headquarters where we meet. Where has she run from? Frankly, it could be Timbuktu. HAVE BEEN’ McCall is famously, gleamingly fit, with 14 fitness DVDs to her name, a 15-year relationship with beauty brand Garnier (which has seen her front some of their biggest campaigns for Nutrisse and Ambre Solaire) and abs that would put Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson to shame. Today, she’s as coiled with energy as a Labrador, and with the same warm brown eyes. Never would you guess that she’s 50 years old, or that she Drecently separated from her husband of 17 years. The split was a shock, given that McCall’s marriage to TV presenter-turned-entrepreneur Matthew Robertson was regarded as one of the most solid in showbiz, so the saying goes. Save for a motivational quote posted to her Instagram in November (that included the phrase ‘your past is your past. Leave it there. Get on with the future part’), she has stayed quiet on the subject, only speaking of it once, after a video she posted led some of her fans to erroneously assume she’d spent Christmas alone. Appearing on ITV’s This Morning in January, she confirmed that she and Robertson had spent Christmas together with their three children. Today, she says little on the subject, only that she’ll never speak about it in detail. ‘I know it’s annoying,’ she says, ‘but it’s for the DAVINA HAS USED GARNIER children’s sake. They are my priority and always will be.’ AMBRE SOLAIRE UV WATER The problem with being as famously open as McCall SPF 30 TO PROTECT HER SKIN FROM THE SUN, £14.99; DAVINA’S has been, however, is that her fans expect that openness HAIR IS COLOURED USING in perpetuity, and feel almost cheated if she closes up. GARNIER NUTRISSE SHADE NUMBER 4.2 GOLDEN BROWN, But unlike, say, her well-documented battles with drink £5.79, BOTH PRODUCTS ARE and drugs, the breakdown of her marriage didn’t just AVAILABLE AT BOOTS.COM 40 REDONLINE.CO.UK JUNE 2018 Red woman happen to her, it happened to her family. Whatever drug addict and an alcoholic was on television, and heartache has gone on behind the scenes, the woman nobody ever talked about it. I thought, “Somebody is sitting in front of me today seems happy, healthy and going to find out about it. I need to start talking, just brimful of optimism for the future. ‘I’m in a good place,’ to get it out.” And then it was my label for a few years. she smiles. Talk turns to her 50th birthday last year. Did You know, “Davina’s drink and drug hell.”’ the milestone faze her? ‘Not in the slightest! Not at all. Perhaps surprisingly for someone who’s been through When I was 30 and looked forward to 50, I was like, so much, she doesn’t think she has changed. ‘I’ve pretty “Life’s going to be over, 50 is going to be terrible, I’m much stayed the same,’ she says. ‘I’m the same person, going to be in Scholl shoes, I’m never going to wear just a bit more grounded. One of the ways I described a bikini ever again.” And, actually, I obsess about myself in my 30s was “half mum, half wild child”. And categorically busting every myth. In fact, it’s becoming that is so true. I am extremely, annoyingly compliant. I a bit of a personal mission. If somebody tells me, “Well, hate breaking the rules, and I love it when people tell me you’re this age, you shouldn’t be doing that any more,” what to do and I can deliver. I always want to do a good I’m going to do it even more, just to annoy them.’ job. I’m like the perfect Brownie. But then the other half McCall says she has been reading a lot about longevity of me wants to flash my boobs on the red carpet. I want recently. ‘We’re all going to live to 100. Maybe even 120. to be naughty with my friend Lynn when we go out So this is midlife. We all might have to work until 70. dancing. My mum was really naughty, and I definitely But I love working. Working is important for mental got that from her. But now I don’t do drugs and I don’t health and keeping your mind active.’ drink alcohol, I can keep my naughtiness under control.’ ‘I AM ANNOYINGLY COMPLIANT, BUT HALF OF ME WANTS TO FLASH One of the things that most surprised her about being So what does she do to be naughty instead? ‘I let my 50 is howMY she feels B physically.OO ‘NotB havingS periodsON is THEhair down,’ RE she smiles.D ‘Dancing,CARPET’ music. Nothing really quite a relief,’ she admits. ‘For a week a month I’d be in replaces alcohol, but oh, my God, I dance a lot better such a bad mood. You can forget about that completely. without booze than I did with booze. If you don’t have Body-wise, I’m probably the happiest with my body that to give up booze, then for God’s sake don’t give up I ever have been. I’ve got more saggy skin because of booze. I had to grieve not drinking. That was so sad. But my age, but that doesn’t bother me – not a fuck is given. I knew that alcohol was the gateway to drugs for me, and People are always going on about [wearing] bikinis on it would still be the gateway. It’s just not worth it.’ beaches, and I’m like, “Why wouldn’t you? Who cares?” She says the challenges, routines and adrenaline highs We need to get out there and do it. We need to show that come with working out suit her driven all-or-nothing them it’s fine and we don’t care. I’m much happier in personality. ‘Yes! Come on!’ she whoops when our talk my own skin now, more than ever. In my 20s, one of turns to fitness, and she leaps out of her seat in such a the reasons I took drugs was because I felt deeply manner that I’m afraid she’ll take me on a circuit round uncomfortable about everything then. When I took the studios. She is a huge advocate of exercise for the drugs, I felt okay. But I suppose now I have that “not mental health benefits, although she only ‘became a caring” thing. That’s a much happier place to be.’ runner’ last summer, and says she went ‘slightly Forrest One of the more challenging things about interviewing Gump’ shortly before doing The Great North Run in McCall is that you are unlikely to unearth any shocking Newcastle. ‘I’ve done a couple of marathons but, last ‘I HAD TO GRIEVE revelations, because she’s already revealed everything summer, running, I got this euphoria that I used to get with a candour that most professionals of her standing from clubbing,’ she smiles. ‘I think it’s because I listen would balk at. That her drug and alcohol addictions [she to music. Really loud. Sometimes I can be seen running N OT DRINKING, entered rehab in her 20s with the help of her boyfriend at like a lunatic with my hands outstretched. I love it!’ the time, singer Eric Clapton] are so well documented is Does she have days when she can’t be arsed? ‘Some BUT I KNEW why she is so at ease with talking about them now: there mornings I don’t want to do it,’ she admits. ‘I’m down. are no skeletons in her closet, which must be liberating, I’m tired.