Davina McCall has revealed she put on a costume and performed on The Masked Singer Christmas Special after finding out she needed surgery to remove a benign brain tumour.
The former Big Brother presenter, 57, underwent the operation in November 2024 to excise a colloid cyst, which was discovered during a health check-up linked to her menopause advocacy work.
McCall, who has judged The Masked Singer since 2020, said she didn’t reveal the severity of her illness to the rest of the show’s panel.
The panel was made up of returning cast members Jonathan Ross and Mo Gilligan, with comedy duo Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French also joining for the festive special.
“I pretended to everybody on the judging panel [that] I was sick. And then I actually put on a costume and performed,” McCall told The Guardian.
The presenter performed “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” dressed as Star and came second behind Nutcracker, later revealed to be Frankie Goes to Hollywood singer Holly Johnson.
After discovering McCall was Star, Ross told her: “There is absolutely no way, we thought you couldn’t sing that well. I’m glad you’re OK, but to me you are now dead.”
Reflecting on the “quite weird” performance, McCall admitted she’d thought at the time: “if I don’t make it, this will be amazing for my kids to watch.” She added: “I know that sounds a bit dark.”
McCall shares three children with her ex-husband Matthew Robinson. The couple are parents to two daughters, Holly, 23 and Tilly, 21, and a son Chester, 18.
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Elsewhere in the interview, McCall said she’s no longer afraid of dying as she believes her children would be able to cope without her.
“I think if I’d got ill when my kids were little it would have been very different, but I looked at my three kids and, although I didn’t want to leave them, I did think: you’d all be OK if I did. That’s a nice feeling,” she said.
McCall, the host of reality dating show My Mum, Your Dad, has long advocated for women’s health issues, and has presented a documentary called Sex, Myths And The Menopause and another on contraception called Davina McCall’s Pill Revolution.
She became an MBE in the King’s birthday honours for services to broadcasting in 2023 and was given a special recognition gong at the National Television Awards in 2024 for her broadcasting career.
