I want to take things easier to calm my mind

Despite her recent pledge to work less after battling breast cancer and a brain tumour, Davina McCall reveals why reuniting relatives on Long Lost Family is the television job she'll never give up

- EXCLUSIVE BY ALISON JAMES

THERE aren't many UK television presenters who are mononyms that is, so famous they're known by just their first name. Claudia Winkleman is arguably one, but before Claudia came Davina.

Davina McCall is the original, one of the undisputed queens of popular TV, from the cultural phenomenon that was the original Big Brother to the glittery spectacle of The Masked Singer and the fuzzy warmth of match-making show My Mum, Your Dad.

Alongside Nicky Campbell, Davina, 58, is also the co-host of Long Lost Family, the deeply moving documentary series that, like her, is in a class all of its own.

Now in its 15th series, it goes to places other television shows can't reach as it attempts to help people separated by adoption and trauma, find and reconnect with birth family members.

It's certainly a project very close to Davina's heart. It fact, of all her TV projects it would seem to be the closest. And the format feels just as fresh to the presenter as it did when it started back in 2011.

"I'm sure that's because each contributor brings their own, very individual experience and personality - their own story - to the table, so to speak," she says.

"While the core of experiences may be similar a mother searching for the child she gave up for adoption, for instance, or separated siblings trying to trace each other as every story, every journey, is different, they are all unchartered territory.

"When we go into a new series, I often think that we surely must have heard every kind of adoption story out there but every time, I'm amazed that this isn't the case. The variety of people wanting to find each other and how much it means to them, is unbelievable." While Long Lost Family is undeniably about loss, Davina feels that ultimately it is about love at its purest.