You Can Do It: Lessons from Davina McCall

"My mum not being proud of me is why I’m famous. I’ve got her to thank for that."

Davina McCall needs little introduction. For over thirty years, she has been one of the most recognisable faces on British television; the woman who made Big Brother unmissable, who has run marathons for Sport Relief, campaigned tirelessly on the menopause, and kept going through health challenges that would have floored most people.

But, listening to her talk, you quickly realise there is a great deal more to Davina than the famous face. Now 58 years of age, she is warm, irreverent, deeply self-aware, and full of hard-won wisdom that’s directly applicable to anyone building a business.

Davina is married to Michael, whom she jokingly refers to as ‘spreadsheet man’; he’s an entrepreneur, and they have three children. She has a conservative attitude to money, and says she is constantly ‘evolving’ and always learning.

The song that keeps her going

Davina’s most-played Spotify song for the last two years is a track called ‘You Can Do It’ by Caribou. She first heard it while she was out running, on the same day she discovered she had a brain tumour. Keeping the diagnosis private while processing it largely alone, she found herself leaning on the song’s relentless, looping message. “Music for me is my mood-altering drug,” she said. “If I need to get myself fired up for something, I’ll play it, and by the end, I’m running around going, I’ve got this.”

The song carried her through the brain tumour, and then through a subsequent cancer diagnosis. Its composer, Dan Snaith, heard Davina talking about it and invited her to a live show at the Roundhouse in London. She stood near the sound booth at the back of the venue, but when Dan played the track - something he rarely does live - he pointed directly at her as it ended. It is a small but emotional story that amplifies her philosophy of finding the thing that fires you up and using it to get you through.

Forget the CV: Show me the calamity

Talking of the early experiences that shaped her as she approaches the ripe old age of 60, she says that until she met and married Michael, she felt that she had always carried everything. She’s now ‘sharing the burden’ with her husband (whom she adores).

Davina introduced a concept she calls the ‘Calamity Vitae’, as opposed to the Curriculum Vitae. Her mother, a brilliant, electric woman who had never been properly parented herself, was unable to show Davina the love and pride she craved as a child. Rather than be defined by it, Davina turned it into relentless forward momentum.

“I spent my entire life trying to make her proud of me,” she said. “But I’m not sitting around bemoaning it, and I haven’t turned myself into a victim and let that rule my life, because actually, my mum not being proud of me is why I’m famous. I’ve got her to thank for that.”

Each milestone - a job at MTV, her own show, mainstream television - was driven by a quiet, relentless thought of, ‘I’ve got my own show. Can you see me now?’ Her mother never quite delivered the response she was looking for, but by the time that became apparent, Davina was in the best job of her life and enjoying every moment of it.

Her message for entrepreneurs was direct: stop worrying about qualifications and start valuing what you have survived. Disasters force you to find a solution, but they also equip you to handle the next crisis with far greater confidence.

She said, “Walk towards the solution. The problem is the making of you.”

Be as annoying as a mosquito

Before she became a household name, Davina was booking male models at Models One and running club nights in Notting Hill. It was through one of those nights that MTV came calling, asking her group to entertain celebrities on the launch train from Victoria to Amsterdam. Davina dressed as a cleaning lady, handed out champagne from a tea urn, and spent the journey thinking one thing: I want to work here.

What followed was three years of what she cheerfully describes as ‘harassment’. Her teenage sister helped her to make video tapes of herself presenting, dressed as various characters, and sent them relentlessly to a producer whose number she had charmed out of someone at the launch event. Almost a year later, he asked her to stop calling. Her response was characteristically direct, saying, “I will stop annoying you if you give me someone else’s number.” He did.

Six months later, she had an audition. Six months after that, she was on screen. Three years from start to finish, and she never once considered quitting. Davina quotes Anita Roddick, the founder of The Body Shop, who used to ask: ‘Have you ever been to bed with a mosquito?’ One determined, small yet persistent voice can make an enormous impact. In business, a ‘no’ is simply a ‘yes’ that hasn’t happened yet.

Find your voice before someone else uses it

One of the most resonant stories from Davina was about her failed chat show. In her mid-thirties, she was offered the chance to front a new BBC chat show, from the team behind the legendary Michael Parkinson’s show. It was, she thought at the time, the job of her dreams.

The pilot was brilliant, but the BBC decided to scale it up: move it to Saturday night, change the set from cool industrial grey to pink and purple, put her name in lights, and give her a grand staircase to descend. She says she found it ‘embarrassing’. But she stayed silent, deferring to people she assumed knew better, and convinced everyone involved that she was on board. The show went out. The press was savage, calling it the end of her career and the ‘worst show they’d ever seen’.

Pregnant with her third child, she remembers sitting in her car outside Sainsbury’s, head on the steering wheel, steeling herself to go in. People were coming up to her and rubbing her back in sympathy. It was that bad, and she cringed as she recalled:

“By changing the set and the name, it had gone from feeling like me. I’m quite a tomboy, and in my masculine energy, this pink set with my name in lights wasn’t me. I couldn’t interview [these people] in the way that I wanted to.”

What she took from it was the importance of owning your voice and trusting that when you say ‘that’s not really me’, people will respect you more, not less, for having the strength to say what you really feel.

She later proved to herself that she can interview people through her podcast, ‘Begin Again’, which has been a genuine hit. The failed chat show was, she says, the beginning of learning to trust herself. Her advice to the room was simple: other people often bring their own agendas, insecurities, and projections to your conversations and your business. Don’t let them! Speak your voice and speak your truth.

Trust the voice on the edge of the bed

Since her brain tumour operation, Davina has developed a much clearer relationship with her own intuitive voice. This is something she believes every entrepreneur already has, but habitually drowns out.

“No one knows you better than you,” she said. “You know that feeling when you go to somebody and say, ‘Should I employ this person in my business?’ They give you an answer, and you think, that’s not quite what I was looking for; let me ask someone else. You didn’t need to ask either of those people, because you know.”

Her practice is simple: when a big decision looms, she finds somewhere quiet - usually the edge of her bed in the morning - takes a few breaths, asks herself the question, and listens. Her mind, she admits, is rarely quiet enough to do this during the day. But in that early-morning stillness, she finds the answer arrives immediately. It is, she says, the most useful thing the operation gave her.

Are you terrified, or just excited?

For most of her career, Davina operated in a state she described as pure terror: dry mouth, racing heart, convinced she might not survive the next live broadcast. Then someone offered her a reframe that changed everything. She said:

“Are you terrified, or are you just excited? It feels the same - tell yourself you’re excited. And I thought… oh! I’ve been telling myself I’m terrified all this time. And actually, I’m just having the best time of my life.”

She also spoke candidly about the power of owning failure openly. Ego tells you to hide your mistakes. But in her experience, telling people what went wrong, in her case the chat show, the agent who told her workout DVDs were ‘naff’ before they became the best-selling DVDs in the country, earned far more respect than she expected. Investors, she pointed out, are more likely to back someone who failed, learned, and returned than someone who claims a spotless record.

Keep walking

Davina closed with a message that felt written for the room, and for anyone who has ever wondered whether to keep going.

“It doesn’t matter what you’ve achieved. Did you have a go? Did you try? That’s what you’re all doing here. Keep going. No is a yes that hasn’t happened yet. And at the end of your life, you will be so proud.”

Key takeaways from Davina McCall:

• Build your Calamity CV.
  Qualifications matter less than what you’ve survived. Run towards the problem; it will make you more capable and prepare you for the next one.

• A no is a yes that hasn’t happened yet.
  Be as persistent and unavoidable as a mosquito. Don’t give up at the first hurdle, or the fifth.

• Know yourself.
  If a decision doesn’t feel like you, say so, because people respect you more for it, not less.

• Trust your inner voice.
  No one knows your business better than you do. Find the quiet, ask the question, and listen.

• Reframe fear as excitement.
  The physical sensation is identical, but the label is everything. You’re not terrified. You’re ready.

• Own your failures out loud.
  Sharing what went wrong and what you learned earns more respect than hiding it.

• Say it until it’s true.
  Manifesting is simply keeping yourself walking towards a goal by articulating it. Say it and keep going.