Interview with Davina McCall for Big Brother: Best Shows Ever

Ahead of Big Brother: Best Shows Ever, we sat down (virtually) with Davina McCall to discuss this new show celebrating Big Brother's 20th anniversary.

1) It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since Big Brother first landed on UK screens, what do you miss most about presenting it?

DM: I know, god I can’t believe its 20 years. Over the 11 years that I did, it developed a lot and changed a lot. The beginning few years, I loved the anarchy and the fact we didn’t know what was going to happen or how it worked. The first couple of series, we didn’t know how anything would pan out or how people would react. Then in the next few series, people used to say ‘oh it’s a set up’ or ‘the producers are fixing it’ but actually, we never knew what was going to happen. We might have put two people in that we thought ‘they definitely will fancy each other’ and then they don’t fancy each other at all. Free will is such an amazing thing. I remember there was a task where my producer said that we were going to put them all in cardboard boxes. I asked ‘are you sure, that is going to be the most boring bit of telly ever’ and he went, ‘yes, we’re going to do it’. It turned out to be the best thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve never laughed to hard! You just never knew what was going to work or be brilliant!

2) You hosted Big Brother for a total of 11 years, so it must have been a job you loved to do?

DM: Oh my god, I loved it so much, so so much. It is one of those programmes if you invest in it, it gives back. It is like a soap opera, if you invest in a soap opera and you watch it for a week, it will give back to you in so many ways because you get totally engrossed in the plot and the cast – you know everything about it. There was the cult of Big Brother where a certain group of people were as obsessed as me and we could talk about it for ever. The nuances and the little things you would notice. Would the housemates notice that Big Brother had put something in the garden? Had the people at home? It became sort of a clique that we were all a member of. So that’s so nice to be back with the obsessives! Also live television, I LOVE live television.  There is no point in filming something live, if there is no danger of something going wrong, which it often did in Big Brother – it was so very exciting – that’s what people were watching for.


Full Interview at
http://www.jonn.co.uk/2020/06/interview-with-davina-mccall-for-big.html

Long Lost Family Special: Born Without Trace

Foundlings are people abandoned as babies, often in the first hours and days of their lives. Born without trace, with no identifying information, they have had no way of unlocking the secrets of their past. But in this new ground-breaking documentary series, presented by Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell, the team behind Long Lost Family combine the latest DNA technology with painstaking detective work, to enable four foundlings to finally uncover their identities.

This two-part series features the incredible true story of a man who was left in a car on the outskirts of Belfast, and a woman left the other side of the Irish border in a telephone box in Dundalk. Also, a woman found at just two hours old in a ladies public toilet in Warminster and a man found in a corned beef box outside a railway tavern in Greenhithe. All four are searching for answers to the most fundamental questions: when’s my birthday; where do I come from; who are my parents and who am I?

http://www.jonn.co.uk/2020/05/long-lost-family-special-born-without.html

BIG BROTHER’S BEST EVER EPISODES TO LAND ON E4, CELEBRATING 20 YEARS SINCE LAUNCH

BB Icons Davina McCall and Rylan Clark-Neal will help choose and dissect classic episodes of the original ‘lockdown show’

British public – this is Big Brother, please do not swear when we tell you that classic episodes of the original ‘lockdown show’ will be landing on E4 this summer, as a big old celebration of the show’s 20th anniversary.

Big Brother: Best Shows Ever Show, will allow E4 audiences to get their reality fix for the summer revisiting some of the juiciest, most memorable Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother episodes. Big Brother Icons Davina McCall and Rylan Clark-Neal will introduce each show reflecting on some of their favourite moments and reliving the drama.

http://www.jonn.co.uk/2020/05/big-brothers-best-ever-episodes-to-land.html