Davina McCall Rubbish At Radio Presenting: The Public

You might think that everybody loves Davina McCall, what with all those crazy faces she pulls and all that amusing talk of her heroin addiction, but you'd be wrong - several people think that Davina McCall is an arse.

This is the busiest time of the year for Davina McCall - as presenter of Big Brother and that rubbishy Big Brother spin-off about body language, Davina is fiercely ubiquitous at the moment - but that didn't stop Davina McCall from trying her hand at radio presenting. Davina hosted the mid-morning Radio 2 show last week as a stand in for Ken Bruce, which would have been great except that Davina McCall was so rubbish at it that over 150 people complained about her "inane chatter." This new bodge means that Davina McCall has now failed to impress with a BBC TV show and a BBC radio show, so fingers crossed she ballses up Ceefax soon and gets her much-deserved hat-trick.

We feel a little bit sorry for Davina McCall, you know. Her old Big Brother co-hosts managed to use Big Brother as a springboard to greater success - Russell Brand was given his own Radio 2 show and will soon star in a Judd Apatow movie, while Dermot O'Leary was also given his own Radio 2 show and currently presents X Factor, one of the most-watched shows on TV - but Davina McCall hasn't moved on. She still hosts Big Brother where, we admit, she does a pretty good job at pretending that she gives a flying turd about whatever witless fame-hungry tosser gets evicted each week. 

But you can't say that Davina McCall isn't doing her best to explore new horizons - it's just that all of her new horizons have been crap. There was He's Having A Baby, where Davina McCall made some men cry because their wives were pregnant, there was Davina's axed chat show, there were those adverts for hair-dye that could only be worse if they contained graphic scenes of abortion and now Davina McCall can add 'universally hated stint as a Radio 2 presenter' to her CV too. BBC News reports:

Davina McCall's stint as a stand-in host on BBC Radio 2 has attracted more than 150 complaints from listeners. The presenter filled in on Ken Bruce's weekday morning show last week. But the BBC said 156 people complained, while others posted comments about her "inane chatter" and "cringe-worthy" style on the BBC messageboards.

While there are plenty of good reasons for Radio 2 listeners to dislike Davina McCall - they like to hear Michael Parkinson grumble monotonously about young people punctuated by Jamie Cullum records, not zany former heroin addicts who rely too heavily on the 'silent wacky gape' as a punchline to their unfunny quips - it just goes to prove that you should stick to what you're good at. In Davina McCall's case that's presenting Big Brother spin-off shows about body language where she's contractually obliged to listen to a psychologist discuss why a housemate hates his parents because he stuck his tongue out for a nanosecond, then bark the work "incredible" no matter what they've actually said and then launch into a brief anecdote about her own life.

And as for Radio 2, it's eager to get past the Davina debacle by drafting in a new stand-in presenter with slightly more intellectual qualifications than Davina McCall. The Iggle Piggle from In The Night Garden show starts next week.

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Listeners Turned Off By DJ Davina - BBC