Davina McCall shares bombshell revelation about dying after devastating brain tumour

She’s had the toughest two years of her life, but Davina McCall says surviving a brain tumour has given her a new lease of life as she confessed: “I’m not afraid of dying anymore”.

The TV presenter had to face her fears when she went under the knife last year to remove the colloid cyst that could have put her in a coma if she’d left it untouched. And Davina says facing the ticking time bomb in her head has changed her perspective on life.

She confessed: “It was the best gift because I am not afraid of dying anymore. I have lived the life I wanted and I am not lying there going, ‘I wish I'd done that thing. I wish I'd done that job. I wish I'd not stayed in this relationship. I haven't lived the life I want.'

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"I mean, it's a really amazing place to get to, not being scared of dying. I think having no regrets and feeling like you are living fully in the life you want to be in, it's quite rare.”

Davina discovered the tumour in her brain during a random health check in 2023 and says she spoke to four different neurosurgeons around the world before she agreed to have it removed in November. Fearing she might not make it off the operating table, she says she “went forensic” on her children’s lives to come to terms with how they’d cope without her as well as discussing with partner Michael Douglas.

And realising Holly, 23, Tilly, 21, and 18-year-old Chester were thriving in life gave the 57-year-old the confidence to go under the knife.

“I was really worried about my kids,” explained Davina, as she opened up about facing her mortality when doctors discovered she had a colloid cyst that could have put her in a coma if she’d not had it removed. I went forensic. I'm thinking about my children and where they were at in their life, what stage they were at. You're only as happy as your unhappiest child, right?

“And I came to a realisation after about six months of cross-examining them about their life and telling them the whole time how much I've loved my life, my eldest daughter caught on. She was like, ‘you are not dying’. But I realised that they would be great, they’d miss me, I want to be with them, but they would be okay. I felt like I could go to sleep on the operating table and know that they were all here to help me. But I can let go of the outcome.”

TV host Davina’s operation last year was a complete success and her recovery has been remarkable. But as she prepared to have the operation it wasn’t just her kids she was thinking about. Davina also reconnected with her step-mum and came to terms with all the ups and downs in her life including her drug addiction.

Speaking at the Happy Place Festival at the weekend, she confessed: “Part of my, ‘am I okay to let go of my life?’ has been to examine all of my past.

"And I wouldn't change anything because without sounding arrogant, because it isn’t, I love myself. I have been on a massive life journey and I've been through terrible struggles. We've been talking a lot about a calamity vitae instead of a curriculum vitae because I think when you go for a job, ‘so what you learned at school?’

"It's like what have you learned at the University of Life? How many calamities have you been through? Because that's where the learning comes from. I've learned that if something really hard happens, it's a good thing.

“I was like to Michael, ‘If I make it through this brain surgery. It's going to be the best thing that's ever happened to me.'

“The learning that I have made in the two years since I found out about it, has been so immense and enriching in my life. I wouldn't change that for the world. But when it happened, obviously it was like another calamity coming. But do not be afraid of disasters, they will make you a better.

“How can you think your way out of it? I saw Mel Robbins the other day talking online. And I've heard it before, but she has this saying, ‘no one's coming, you’ve just got yourself’.

“You can't keep waiting for somebody else to come and rescue you. You've got to rescue yourself and when you do, oh, it feels so good and you feel so proud!”

She added: “It’s bloody hard. And that's another thing that I've had to learn to not be resistant towards hard work on myself, to actually think, ‘great, a juicy bit of hard work on myself’.

“Because almost the harder the work, the more work you have to do, the bigger the reward because if you have to work harder, you are in a darker place. But when you see the light, the reward is so massive.

“A couple of people have said today, ‘oh, you look so well’. But it's because I am in a happy place. If you are not in a happy place, you can begin again whenever you want or need to.”

Davina has been a mainstay of British TV since exploding onto our screens when she was 25 and she’s showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon working on series including The Masked Singer.

She’s fronting a new BBC dating series, Stranded on Honeymoon Island, her podcast Begin Again is going from strength to strength and her campaigning around menopause is helping women across the country.

And while she admits she’s always been "annoyingly enthusiastic”, she sees it as her duty to help younger women.

But Davina’s looking to her elders to embrace their eccentricities too.

She said: “Getting older and not caring any more is a gift. There’s got to be a gift with aging because otherwise it could feel like a loss.

“But aging is a loss of one thing, but you gain so much more in another way. I saw a girl earlier in a beautiful outfit. I said, ‘you look amazing’. She's like, ‘no, I think it's inappropriate. I'm 40. I shouldn't really be wearing this’.

“And I was literally sweating my ass off, I literally don't care! The more inappropriately someone dresses, the older they are, the more I love them. I need women 60, 70, 80, my older stateswomen, I need you to be outlandish. I need people out there shining the light for me so that life as I get older looks like it's going to be exciting.

“And that's what I want to do for you. I want you to look at me and go, ‘oh my God, being in my fifties is going to be great.’

“I’m at a time in my life where even if things go wrong, you don't perceive it like that, things that go wrong are teaching you something, guiding you somewhere. And that is the gift of getting older. You just learn more and more. It's so great!”

Davina also spoke in February about her brain operation saying she changed her Will to include heartfelt letters to her children ahead of her brain operation - because she feared she could die.

She said: There's that saying, 'A life lived in fear is a life half-lived'. If you don't really want to do something, don't do it. But if there's something that you want to do, yeah, do it. Write your bucket list now. Write the bucket list now, in your thirties, and go, "What is my bucket list? Like, what do I want to do before I die? And let's start doing it now.”

She added: "I'm grateful. Life will never be the same again, but in rather a good way,"