Davina McCall has opened up about her battle with addiction and said that drugs once filled a hole in her heart.
The TV presenter previously revealed on The Diary Of A CEO podcast that she used to smoke cannabis with her mother Florence aged 12.
Speaking about her upbringing and the influence of her mother, who was an alcoholic, McCall, 55, told The Times: “There’s a lot of my mum in me.
“I don’t want to slag her off. She was my mum, warts and all. She wasn’t perfect. And she did make me, in so many ways, who I am.
“She was party central, but also, I’m at pains to say, along with being quite a chaotic parent, she was really f***ing fun.
“She was spontaneous. I’m not very good at that. I feel like I’m such a wild woman when I’m spontaneous, because I’m a planner.
“I like to be organised, because my mum was very chaotic. So it makes me feel safe when I go: ‘OK, next Christmas we’ll…’ And I do that in January.”
Admitting that she probably never needed drugs, McCall then said: “But actually, I had a hole here (she puts her hands on her heart) and drugs filled that.
“And eventually I’ve kind of put sticky tape over each f***king hole, and probably each therapy session I go to is like another bit of tape.
“Now I feel like it’s healed, but I am still vigilant. I don’t ever want to drink again, that’s for sure. I love not drinking.”
McCall, who used to present Big Brother, also recalled waking somebody up on the Tube to tell them to go to an AA meeting.
She said: “I sat next to somebody on the Tube the other day, and he almost had his head in my lap. He was asleep.
“He had a can of Special Brew. I thought: ‘At which stop to wake him up and tell him to go to AA?’” she said.
“I thought I’d wait until two stops before mine, and then I’d wake him up. Everybody else was avoiding sitting there.
“So at Holborn I woke him up and went: ‘Mate, are you all right?’ ‘Yeah, yeah.’ I was like: ‘I don’t think you are. I don’t drink alcohol, and I think maybe you should think about stopping.
“‘They give you biscuits at AA. It’s really nice. You get biscuits and a cup of tea.’ And I thought: ‘He’s not going to remember any of this, but it might be like a seed I’ve planted.'”
