TV presenter Davina McCall has said she is “almost embarrassed” by how much it means to her to receive Edinburgh TV Festival’s 2026 outstanding achievement award.
Speaking in conversation ahead of the festival awards ceremony on Thursday evening, McCall was visibly emotional as she talked about the honour.
“It means a lot,” she told the TV festival audience. “I’m almost embarrassed by how much it means to me.”
30-year career honoured
The Edinburgh TV Festival’s 2026 outstanding achievement award was presented to McCall in honour of her 30-year career on television. McCall first had her TV debut on MTV, then spent a decade hosting Big Brother.
She has also featured in multiple shows, including Bafta award-winning series Long Lost Family, Million Pound Drop and The Masked Singer.
In a wide-ranging on-stage interview with her friend and Long Lost Family co-presenter Nicky Campbell, McCall said she would not change a thing about her life or career. She spoke about her difficult and public divorce and her past health troubles.
Health battles and advocacy
Asked about the downsides of fame, McCall said her divorce was “tough”. “I felt a bit like a Kardashian when my divorce was announced,” she said.
The 58-year-old also touched on receiving a breast cancer diagnosis in October last year. In April, she said she had received the “all clear” following surgery. It came after she previously underwent surgery in 2024 to remove a benign brain tumour.
“When I got breast cancer, I felt like I could really disappear and not talk about it, but I’d already done it before [with my brain tumour],” she said. “I was kind of angry I had to talk about it.”
Message to the industry
She also discussed creating her documentaries Sex, Myths And The Menopause and Sex, Mind And The Menopause – and her passion and commitment to advocating for women’s health.
“We are all going to go through [the menopause] and for some of us it will be so bad that we consider taking our own lives,” McCall said. “I’m on the other side, and I am living my best life and I am going to carry on doing that so you can see it is going to be OK. I’ve been reborn as a woman who can no longer give birth to children, but can hopefully mentor other women.”
She added: “My cause still is women’s health. You have to go all in on one thing, and this is it for me.”
Asked if she had a message for the TV and entertainment industry, McCall simply said: “Love.” “Love is the antidote to fear, we’re all frightened and feeling a bit nervous about our rapidly changing industry,” she said.
But she emphasised that the TV and media industry has a “responsibility to be more loving about everything”. “I know at the moment that clickbait is violence and anger and hatred and opposition, and I don’t know how we can do this, but we need to put more love out into the world to show that it is a safe place,” she said. “Because it’s such a catch-22 that when you put violence out into the world, it creates more fear at the cost of love.”
