Davina McCall was just three years old when she ‘wet herself’ on a solo trip to Paris.
The 55-year-old broadcaster grew up largely in Surrey with her grandparents, but during the school holidays, she would go alone to France to meet her French mother Florence Kock.
‘The first trip I remember was very traumatic. I was three or four and too scared to ask for help. I wet myself on the flight,’ she told the Sunday Times’ travel supplement.
‘My mother would often forget to pick me up at the airport and I’d be waiting and waiting before somebody would call to remind her.’
She characterised the scenario as “natural,” and claimed her mother was “totally insane, with no boundaries.”
She added: ‘That was our normal. I would stay with my Spanish grandmother, French businessman grandfather and my big sister, who my mum had when she was 16.’
By the age of 12, the Big Brother star was partying with her mother and wearing high heels and cosmetics.
‘Paris was exciting, flamboyant and a bit scary sometimes,’ she admitted. ‘In my early twenties I moved there, living on Rue Saint-Martin, near the Pompidou Centre, working as a singing waitress in a jazz club.’
Davina, who has three children, Holly, 21, Tilly, 19, and Chester, 16, came back live with her father Andrew when she was 13 and kept in touch with him until his death in March 2022 from dementia, but she never reconciled with her mother.
She saw little of her, and her excursions to France were marred by her socialite mother’s absence from their meetings.
Florence died in South Africa in 2008, and she previously admitted she felt a ‘sense of relief’.
She explained: ‘When she died I felt a sense of relief that I could stop swinging from side to side. And I also think, “Please God, when I die, don’t let it be a relief to anybody.” ‘
She did not attend the burial, but she did forgive her mother for abandoning her over the years, saying that she finally understood her mother “did the best she could with what she had.”
