Bios

She went to St Paul's Girls School, were she met her inspiration - Headmistress Baroness Heather Brigstocke. She went to Cambridge University to read Classics, but found that subject was not for her and went to Edinburgh University, graduating in Performing Arts. She then studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

She became a receptionist, and then a runner on the first series of The Eleven O'Clock Show. The producers were looking for a female interviewer who would act straight but use comedic lines, and searched everywhere - until they tried their receptionist, the rather posh talking Donovan. She made occasional appearance as It Girl Pandora Box-Grainger. Promoted in Series2 to presenter below comedian Iain Lee, she transformed to become "The Angel of Delight", let lose on politicians - including one in which she asked Denis Healey about whether he would ever give Margaret Thatcher a "String of Pearls", she got the co-host job with Lee from late 1999-2000.

Donovan has since gone on to host quiz shows Does Doug Know? and the eponymous Daisy Daisy, which she also wrote and produced. She has gained fame in America with her show Daisy Does America.

As the daughter of the late Terence Donovan, the celebrated fashion photographer, and his second wife Diana, a confidante of the late Princess of Wales, Daisy had what she describes as a “privileged” upbringing: St Paul’s Girls’ School, Edinburgh University, a year at Lamda. Her father, who grew up in the East End, joked that his daughter’s cut-glass accent came with a £20,000- a-year price tag. “I grew up in an environment that was full of fashion everything. Other people had Wuthering Heights on their bookshelf; we had Helmut Newton.” Tragically, Terence Donovan committed suicide nine years ago when Daisy was still a student.

Though she had first wanted to be a fashion journalist (even styling a 14-year-old Angelina Jolie while on an internship at a newspaper: “I put her in a silver catsuit and a bum bag. The most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. What’s nice is that our careers have ended up very much on a par,” she deadpans) and, later, a photographer, she eventually settled on a career as an actress. Success seemed assured when, fresh from drama school, she was cast in the feature film Elizabeth. “Five lines, darling. Can you believe they cut it? I played Joe Fiennes’s wife, who got killed.” With her one credit on the cutting-room floor, she took a job as a receptionist at the television production company Talkback. It was from behind this desk that she was picked to present their thrice-weekly The 11 O’Clock Show, just seven days before it first went on air. “I wasn’t concentrating,” she says of the instant fame. “At the time, I didn’t realise what it was.”

Despite a tendency for faux-deferential posturing, Donovan, I suspect, is as confident as the next Old Paulina. Did she always know she would be famous? “God, no. Does anyone ever say they did?” I tell her Gwyneth Paltrow (the daughter of a successful producer and film actress) said exactly that. “I read that, too,” Donovan squeals. “I think that’s such a weird thing to say.” Then, she concedes: “Not to talk for Gwyneth, but if you grow up in an environment like ours, you don’t think, ‘Oh, one day I might be the tax man.’”

Bios

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