Davina McCall has some invaluable advice for women in their 50s struggling to find their soulmate – the sort of chap you’d want by your side in a crisis, to keep you smiling and spurring you on during a brush with your own mortality: Look no further than your local hair salon.

For it is here that the ideal partner can be found. Male hairdressers, she says, are like your best friend and boyfriend rolled into one.

And she should know. After splitting from husband of 17 years Matthew Robertson back in 2017, Davina began dating her own hairdresser, Michael Douglas, whom she has known since before she married.

He was there, on the other side of the chair, throughout the decade of her hosting Big Brother, and there when her marriage to Matthew – father to her three children, Holly, 23, Tilly, 21, and Chester, 18 – broke down.

They became a couple in 2019 and publicly confirmed their relationship in the same year. They live together and co-host a podcast called Making The Cut, further solidifying their bond.

‘If you ask any woman, their hairdresser knows as much about their personal life as their best friend,’ she says.

‘Michael would be totally at home on a girls’ night out. He’s like an honorary woman, because he has spoken to so many women about their entire life.

‘He knew everything about me before we got together. We just told each other everything because we didn’t fancy each other, so you could be really honest, more honest than you would if you fancied someone. The kind of honesty you have with your best friend, warts and all. It was hilarious. It’s really healthy.

‘Then, I guess something changed. Michael gets me, because he understands.’

Davina McCall and her hairdresser Michael Douglas became a couple in 2019. They now live together and host a podcast, Making The Cut

Davina credits Michael with supporting her through the most traumatic time in her life – when a rare tumour was found in her brain

I point out it’s like the 2000 movie What Women Want when a cocky, chauvinistic advertising executive, played by Mel Gibson, finds the ability to hear what women are thinking. ‘Exactly like that,’ laughs Davina.

And it was Michael, a well-known TV hair stylist who’s famous for his regular appearances on BBC’s The One Show and his work with celebrities and supermodels at fashion weeks, whom Davina credits with supporting her through the most traumatic time of her life.

Last November Davina, 57, underwent an operation to remove a benign colloid cyst from her brain.

It was found during a routine check-up while she was advocating for menopause health. A scan revealed she had a rare type of tumour that ‘very, very rarely’ can ‘cause sudden death’.

Davina then underwent successful surgery to remove the tumour, via a craniotomy. With her typical dark humour – no doubt honed with Michael over all those years in the hairdresser’s chair – she even gave it a name (Jeffrey because she doesn’t have any friends of that name), and threw it a birthday party, with Michael playing the piano and singing songs.

By April 2025, following a final MRI scan, she announced the tumour ‘is not coming back’.

For her it was a terrifying ordeal and she is incredibly grateful – and relieved – to have got through it.

Michael, 52, was at her bedside as she recovered and took to social media to keep Davina’s fans updated with her progress.

But he has also been her rock for recovery – which she says included going back to work after three months convalescing.

As a self-confessed workaholic, Davina needed little encouragement to get back in front of the cameras as soon as possible.

And so after three months convalescing, she returned to film the ITV series, Long Lost Family. It was, she says, ‘like coming home’.

‘Michael knew it would help me so he supported me in going back. It was a terrifying to go through but Michael knew it would be what would make me happiest. He was absolutely right. I had three months off but that was it.’

Davina barely stops smiling when we meet, so enthusiastic is she about life at home and at work. She tells me that her outlook has changed since surgery.

Once someone who would put off holidays, or fun experiences, if work got in the way, now she tells me that along with Michael she is seizing the day.

‘My outlook has changed since the operation, in a mega, mega way, like in a whole outlook on life way. Now I’m going to do everything. Sometimes I think that in three or four years I’m going to go and do this but now I’m like, “No, I’m going to do it this year or even next week.”’

There is one unusual goal she has set herself following a memory test which she had to take before her operation.

‘I know this sounds really mad, but I had a test and was told I was good at non verbal reasoning.’

Michael, Davina and her daughter, Holly, celebrate after Davina’s MBE investiture at Buckingham Palace last year

After a break convalescing after her surgery, Davina is back on our screens – on both the BBC and ITV

‘Now, I know I should have known that, as I love maths. But I flunked out of my maths A-level after one year. I’ve now downloaded an app onto my phone and I’ve got myself up to GCSE maths.

‘It’s for kids but I am loving it so I have decided I’m going to retake my maths A-level. It’s something I wouldn’t have done before the operation but it’s unfinished business for me. It will make me feel good.’

After a break from our screens, Davina, 57, is back – and on both the BBC and ITV.

We meet this week to talk about her forthcoming BBC show, Stranded on Honeymoon Island, which sees 12 singletons who are matched into couples, get married and then immediately sent to a remote tropical island to test their relationships in isolation with limited resources.

And next month sees the return of Long Lost Family, which Davina has hosted alongside Nicky Campbell for 14 years.

The show, that reunites estranged family members, is one particularly close to her heart.

‘It’s what makes me happiest,’ she says. ‘My family are givers. The McCalls were always hospitable, always taking people in.’

Her parents split when she was three, and her French mother, Florence – an alcoholic with whom she had a strained relationship – returned to France, leaving Davina to be raised by her father, Andrew, and step-mother, Gaby.

‘People always came to live with us when I was younger. My stepmum and my dad looked after a male model who needed somewhere to live, and he ended up living with us for six months. We also took in a friend of mine who was having a really difficult time when I was about 17 or 18. She came to live with us for six months.

‘My grandma always had people coming to stay and she looked after everybody in the church if they were ill.

‘I grew up giving, and people sometimes will tell me “Stop giving so much”, but it feels nice to do something for someone.’

In the forthcoming series of Long Lost Family viewers will see Davina unite a British Airways steward with her biological family after the steward spotted Davina on her flight and approached her to ask for help.

‘A woman said to me on the flight that she was adopted. So I said, “Tell me the story”. I then told her we could help her and that she should apply for the show and I wished her luck…’

When researchers tracked down her family members, Davina went to see her.

‘It’s such a joy. It was an emotional one… although I suppose they’re all emotional,’ she says.

Davina has come a long way since her TV debut on the music channel MTV in 1992. Since then she’s hosted a stream of shows including Big Brother, The Jump, My Mum Your Dad and The Masked Singer. To still be presenting, three decades on, is a source of both joy and surprise.

‘When I was 47, I used to say that I would be retired by the age of 50,’ she says. ‘I believed that television would retire me and I would just be finished, but that hasn’t been the case.

‘I guess there are lots of television companies who think I’m quite good at my job. I’ve been around along time now so perhaps they think I’m a safe pair of hands. They know what they can get from me. I will try and be professional and do the best work I can on anything I do. But I am so grateful to still be doing it because I love this job.’

She tells me her television idol is Cilla Black.

‘She’s a trailblazer,’ says Davina. ‘She was the light for me.’

Like Davina, Cilla also brought people together. ‘She did and she loved it so much, just like I do,’ she replies.

Of course, Cilla was best known as host of Blind Date – where she acted as an intermediary for the hit show’s singletons. It’s not a million miles away from Davina’s role as counsellor to couples who marry on Stranded on Honeymoon Island.

So, I ask, having found new love with Michael, is she ready to walk down the aisle again herself?

‘We’re in no rush,’ she smiles. ‘We’re really happy.’