Davina McCall reveals she suffered the symptoms of ‘advanced Alzheimer’s’ and ‘couldn’t remember anything’ after her brain surgery

DAILYMAIL.COM • 1h ago

By CHARLOTTE DEAN, ASSOCIATE SHOWBIZ EDITOR 14:48 13 Oct 2026, updated 15:01 13 Oct 2026

Davina McCall has revealed she had advanced Alzheimer’s symptoms after her surgery to remove her brain tumour and suffered months of memory loss.

The TV presenter, 58, revealed the cognitive side effects of her operation while appearing on the Mad, Sad and Bad podcast with Paloma Faith this week.

Davina recalled being unable to watch a film because she couldn’t remember what had happened 15 minutes before, or the previous page of her book.

When her husband Michael Douglas came to visit her in hospital, she said that when he left the room and later returned she wouldn’t remember him being there initially.

Giving an insight into how she struggled with memory loss after the surgery, she said: ‘After I’d had my brain tumor taken out, I had advanced Alzheimer’s.

Davina continued: ‘So I couldn’t remember anything. So 2025 was the hardest year of Michaels and my lives.’

Paloma asked her: ‘You couldn’t remember anything from when to when.’

Davina replied: ‘When I came out of the operation, I didn’t know I’d had an operation. The staff came in every day and they’d go “what’s my name” and I’d go “I don’t know”.

‘Michael would come and visit for two hours and he’d go to the loo and come back an I’d go “oh my god you’re here” and I didn’t know he’d been there.

‘I couldn’t watch a movie for six months, because I couldn’t remember what had happened in the movie 15 minutes before. A book I couldn’t remember the page before.’

The former Big Brother host then explained how she managed to regain her memory by doing singing lessons, which she described as ‘mind physio’.

She said: ‘I did singing lessons. Music. That was my mind physio. Yeah, music was music healed me. And last October was the first time I woke up and I went, ‘Oh my god, I remember what I did yesterday.”

In August, Davina revealed she was privately supported by comedian Peter Kay after being diagnosed with her brain tumour and breast cancer.

Davina had surgery to remove the benign (non-cancerous) tumour in 2024, before being diagnosed with breast cancer the following year.

As Davina battled the double bout of bad news, she revealed she found an unlikely champion in Peter, who she was not friends with prior to her illnesses.

While in hospital undergoing treatment on the brain tumour, she told how she received an unexpected phone call from Peter, 53, to offer his help.

Davina said: ‘Do you know who really helped me, actually, and it was really strange. Peter Kay. He called me when I was in hospital with my brain tumour.

‘I really don’t know him that well but he was unbelievably supportive.’

Davina continued by revealing that he stayed by her side after receiving the news about her breast cancer, and said: ‘When I had my breast cancer diagnosis he just talked me through what to do.

‘He said: “What do you want to do? How do you feel about it?” And he said: “I think you know what you want to do”. And I was like: “Yeah I want to talk about it.”

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