Davina: Beyond Breaking Point, BBC, review
Sport Relief 2014: It is still unusual to see a 46-year-old mother-of-three celebrated on TV for this kind of physical strength
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Your support makes all the difference.What a strange world we live in, when a solution to suffering of poverty-stricken mothers in Kenya is the self-inflicted suffering of an affluent TV personality in Britain, but that is the world of Davina: Beyond Breaking Point in which the Big Brother presenter found herself cycling, swimming and running all the way from Edinburgh Castle to her home in London, to raise money for a Sports Relief project out the outskirts of Nairobi.
You may already have seen the dramatic footage of a wet-suited Davina being pulled half-comatose from the freezing waters of Lake Windermere.
In retrospect, those few moments of shut-eye were probably one of the cushier parts of her seven-day ordeal. You don’t see it in the clip, but we now know that only an hour after being resuscitated, Davina was back on that bike for another 60-mile ride before bed.
Various celebrity chums were waiting at the pit stops to cheer her on, including professional athletes like Denise Lewis and Victoria Pendleton, clearly as in awe of Davina’s Olympic spirit as anyone else.
It was Great British Bake-Off presenter Mel Giedroyc, however, who provided most comfort. She came bearing hypothermia-themed blue-iced gingerbread men and showed her support as Davina jogged into Stratford-upon-Avon by shouting random lines from Shakespeare.
It is still unusual to see a 46-year-old mother-of-three celebrated on TV for this kind of physical strength and the gender balance of her supporters didn’t escape Davina: “I am doing this for the girls,” she said.
This girl was certainly inspired enough to donate a few quid to Sport Relief. And also to retrieve Davina’s work out VHS from behind the back of the sofa, where it’s been since 2005.
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