Davina McCall 2
Short Biography...
Select an answer to get started
What did you find hardest at school?
I think the hardest thing was that in me somewhere. I knew I was a good kid. I'd been brought up by my granny. She had good morals, she had good manners. I knew somewhere in me I was a good person. I just felt like my emotions, and maybe it was hormones as well and was, I had a complicated relationship with my mum. She was an alcoholic and she was quite unstable and I'd spend my holidays with her and I loved her. And it's hard to explain that sometimes that somebody can be very difficult and hurt you, but I loved my mom, so if somebody said something nasty about her, I'd defend her. But she confused me so much and it was extremely painful. And I'd seen lots of drugs and drink around her. And I ended up taking drugs myself, which when I was high on drugs, made me think everything was okay. But the crash afterwards was unbelievably painful. So you take that little girl who knows somewhere that she's a good person and you put her in school. I wanted to do well. I knew I was smart. I knew that I had a brain, but I just couldn't deliver really at school in the way that I wanted to. It was always she could do better. And I always used to think, not with my head, you can't.
Did you enjoy school?
In junior school, I had a change of circumstances when I was about nine and it changed my friendships a bit and I got a bit excluded and I didn't particularly enjoy the last couple of years at junior school. And I went to live with my dad and my stepmom when I was about 13. And when I moved to London, I remember thinking this is an opportunity to be somebody a bit different. People dunno me here, so maybe I can not be the person that I was there. Maybe I'll try and be a bit kind of cooler. Although on the found up completely incorrect, this is a survival technique. So I learned then that survival was about trying to kind of blend in a little bit somewhere somehow. And I ended up really enjoying that school. I got a nice group of friends. I had turmoil going on in my home life. Not with my dad and my stepmom, but I used to go to France in the holidays and that was pretty disruptive for me emotionally. And I would come back and it would take me about a month to almost download all the stuff that had happened and become normal again. That was always a bit troublesome, but it wasn't really school, it was just what was happening at home.
I'm not very popular at school, does it matter?
I mean, I totally understand what it's like feeling unpopular at school. I've been there and it's quite easy for people to say it doesn't matter being unpopular at school, but when you're at school, to me it felt like it really bloody mattered. And every day it felt like I was stepping into danger in some way. And nobody wants to dread going to somewhere that you've got to go every single day. And the one piece of advice that I would try and give is to just try and forge a bond with one other person. And there will be one other person in your year who's either feeling similar to you, just go and form a bond because two of you together. For me, it was Joanna Rivers, she was my person. She's still my friend now. I love Joanna Rivers, and she kept me sane, and I'll never forget her for that. So I think if you could just find somebody who's slightly in the same boat as you, or going through the same feelings, if you are feeling a bit isolated, do not go for the shiny people. I dunno why they're so attractive. There's always the gang of really shiny, trendy people. Avoid them like the plague. Go find someone else.