It’s an evening for celebration as Davina McCall<\/a> gathers with celebrity friends and HELLO! magazine to mark her place at the top of our inaugural Second Act Power List<\/a>. We know we’re celebrating her status as an inspiration to midlife women, her recovery from brain surgery earlier this year and her recent happy engagement. What we don’t realise is we are also celebrating her successful, secret breast cancer surgery, just a week or two earlier, something she bravely chose to share with fans<\/a> this past weekend, in an emotional Instagram post.\u00a0<\/p>\n The inaugural HELLO!\u00a0<\/strong>Power List event is a night to honour inspiring women who are redefining what it means to be in the second act of life. And at the heart of the celebrations is Davina, 58, who epitomises what it means to be a powerful woman in midlife. A year on from life-saving brain surgery and very shortly after her breast cancer surgery, she is thrilled by the news that her campaign with the Menopause Mandate is set to change the lives of millions of women in the UK, after the NHS agreed to include menopause screening in its health checks for over-40s. \u201cWe did it,\u201d she says, leaping across the room to hug two fellow Power Listers and menopause campaigners, the writer Mariella Frostrup and the former Olympian Michelle Griffith-Robinson.<\/p>\n Presenter, activist, mother, author, survivor: there are many words to describe Davina. The latter all the more poignant with the news of her most recent health challenge. But now, thanks to her partner, the hairdresser Michael Douglas<\/a>, she can add fianc\u00e9e to the list. Happy to shout about her \u201cridiculously lovely\u201d news<\/a>, Davina announces: “I\u2019m engaged,\u201d to the surprise of her friend Dame Denise Lewis, who scoops her up in a congratulatory hug. \u201cIt\u2019s really exciting. We\u2019re both very happy,\u201d she beams, talking to HELLO! about the proposal for the first time since the couple\u2019s engagement was confirmed in September, after Michael popped the question in July.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a total surprise. Michael is very funny and had spent the past two years getting down on bended knee and tying an imaginary shoelace on my finger,\u201d she says. \u201cHe got down on bended knee on the beach in Ibiza and I was like: \u2018Is this real?\u2019 I was terrified that if I said yes, he\u2019d be joking. But he recited something he had prepared \u2013 which I\u2019ll keep secret \u2013 and then asked me. He put a lot of thought and consideration into it, and I respected that.\u201d Even in the most private of moments, Davina still found herself in front of a live audience. \u201cWe were hugging, kissing and crying, and heard these two swimmers going: \u2018Yay, congratulations!\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n The couple, who have been together for six years, met on the set of\u00a0Big Brother<\/em> more than 20 years ago. They have five children between them from previous relationships, and Michael called Davina\u2019s children \u2013 Holly, Tilly and Chester<\/a> \u2013 to ask permission to marry her. \u201cHe joked to the kids and said: \u2018Do you want me as a stepdad?\u2019 Everyone is happy for us. Tilly is home from Australia at the moment, so we\u2019ve had a little family thing at home. It\u2019s been so lovely.\u201d<\/p>\n As the news of Davina\u2019s engagement ripples around the room, Jo Wood<\/a> picks up her hand to check for a diamond, but is left disappointed. “I haven\u2019t got a ring. I always said I don\u2019t want one,\u201d she says, wiggling her fingers, naked apart from a thin band with an evil eye. \u201cWhen we do get married, it will be very small and private. Getting married at this stage of life is so different, the second time around. It\u2019s a big deal.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think either of us were sure about getting married again; we were just having a lovely time,\u201d she adds. \u201cBut we had a very big beginning of the year, with a lot of s*** that was going down. As I used to say in the Big Brother\u00a0<\/em>house, I’ve been on quite a journey.\u201d This week marks 12 months since Davina had surgery to remove a benign colloid cyst in her brain<\/a>; she takes my finger and rubs it along the deep groove of her scar so that I can appreciate the seriousness of the operation.<\/p>\n “It still blows my mind \u2013 excuse the pun \u2013 that [brain surgeon] Kevin O’Neill has seen my brain. All of this Farrah Fawcett hair is scar hair,” she says, fluffing up her new strands. “I’m lucky I have Michael, who can give me a fabulous blow-dry.” The first few months after her operation were more chaotic than Davina let on. Her short-term memory was on a 30-second loop, which she navigated by writing notes to herself every morning.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n “I don’t think either of us were sure about getting married again; we were just having a lovely time. But we had a very big beginning of the year, with a lot of s*** that was going down”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n “I started working again on [ITV show] Long Lost Family<\/em> and that saved me. My long-term memory worked, and because I had been filming it for 15 years, it was like an old friend that I knew.” Gradually, she has noticed improvements in her memory. “Things started changing in June and then I had another big breakthrough in September. I’m really good now,” she says. On the anniversary of her surgery, Davina isn\u2019t planning a celebration, just a moment of thanks that she is still here. \u201cIt’s funny coming up to an anniversary. It\u2019s good, as you\u2019ve got something to compare with and say: ‘Look how far I\u2019ve come.’\u00a0<\/p>\n “What this operation showed me was that I\u2019ve had a good life,” she says. Words that have fresh meaning since we discovered she was also just a week or two out of surgery for breast cancer.\u00a0<\/p>\n “I\u2019m grateful for every minute, because I know it might go, and I\u2019m all right with that. I don\u2019t want to die, obviously \u2013 I love life \u2013 but I\u2019m not obsessed with dying now.” What does being in her Second Act mean to her? \u201cIt\u2019s about understanding your weaknesses and apologising when necessary, trying to be a better person and helping people, but not trying to be perfect, which I spent a lot of my life doing.<\/p>\n “I’m the happiest I have ever been. I\u2019m in such a good space,”<\/strong> she adds. “And it\u2019s age that\u2019s given me that, because it is experience; you don\u2019t get the experience without ageing. Some people learn quickly and some people don\u2019t. It\u2019s taken me until my fifties to learn enough to make myself feel really, deeply content.”<\/p>\n Pick up the latest issue of HELLO! on sale in the UK now for the full Second Act Power List party coverage. You can subscribe to HELLO!<\/a><\/b> to get the magazine delivered free to your door every week or purchase the digital edition online via our Apple<\/a><\/b> or Google<\/a><\/b> apps.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.celebrity.land.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s an evening for celebration as Davina McCall gathers with celebrity friends and HELLO! magazine to mark her place at the top of our inaugural Second Act Power List. We know we’re celebrating her status as an inspiration to midlife women, her recovery from brain surgery earlier this year and her recent happy engagement. What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2145902,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[24003,409964,365757],"class_list":["post-2145901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-celebrity-news","tag-davina-mccall","tag-hello-exclusive"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Exclusive-Davina-McCall-says-shes-grateful-for-every-minute-as.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2145901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2145903,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145901\/revisions\/2145903"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2145902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2145901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2145901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2145901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Welcome to the family<\/h2>\n
![\"Davina](\"https:\/\/58v76y8z87lo.hellomagazine.com\/horizon\/large_original_aspect_ratio\/e659d2d775d6-davina-mcall-engaged.jpg\")
\u00a9 Sim\u00e3o Nogueira<\/span><\/div>Davina’s health update<\/h2>\n
\n
![\"man](\"https:\/\/58v76y8z87lo.hellomagazine.com\/horizon\/large_original_aspect_ratio\/d101bc71b2bf-davina-mccall-partner-michael.jpg\")
\u00a9 Hogan Media\/Shutterstock<\/span><\/div>![\"HELLO!](\"https:\/\/58v76y8z87lo.hellomagazine.com\/horizon\/large_original_aspect_ratio\/46a76f5b0b3b-hello-power-list-cover.jpg\")
\u00a9 HELLO!<\/span><\/div>