ITV star's horror cradling 'whimpering' 18-month daughter before meningitis death

Fourteen years after her world collapsed on a family holiday to Lanzarote, former children’s TV presenter Danielle Nicholls is speaking out with a chilling warning for parents: Meningitis B can strike in hours – and it kills the healthiest of children.

Danielle, 47, was just beginning to build the perfect life with her husband, football coach Dean Holden, when their daughter Cici fell suddenly ill and died at only 18 months old.

The couple had been travelling with their three toddlers for what should have been a dream trip in 2012. “We had been delayed at Manchester airport for hours, and the kids were exhausted," Danielle recalls.

"Cici was lethargic and had the beginnings of a cold, but we put it down to the travel. By the morning, she was sort of whimpering, like something was hurting, and she felt cold and clammy. Within three hours, she was gone."

Spanish doctors later confirmed the little girl had meningococcal septicaemia – blood poisoning caused by meningitis B. At the time, there was no public vaccine for the strain that killed her. “It was only introduced in 2015,” Danielle says. “She never had a chance.”

Cici had been healthy and full of life. Danielle still remembers her daughter’s flaming red hair and huge blue eyes. On that May morning, in a small island clinic, medics fought to save the toddler as her skin turned mottled and her limbs darkened with the telltale signs of sepsis.

“They were shouting in Spanish, and I didn’t understand,” she says quietly. “They put her in the ambulance, and told us to follow in a taxi — and we kept overtaking them. I know now they were stopping to resuscitate her. By the time she reached the hospital, she was pronounced dead.”

For several hours afterwards, Danielle refused to let go. “I just held her,” she whispers. “I couldn’t believe that my happy, laughing girl had gone. I watched them fight so hard for her. It didn’t seem real.”

Her husband, Dean — then captain at Oldham Athletic football club and now assistant head coach at Hull City — was “out of his mind with grief”. The pair faced the nightmare of repatriating Cici’s body, a process costing thousands of pounds.

“You don’t think about things like that until it happens to you,” she says. “The red tape, the waiting, the shock — it’s horrific.”

Today, as an ambassador for the charity Meningitis Now, Danielle is determined that no other parent goes through the same hell. Her plea comes amid the recent meningitis B outbreak in Kent, where students have died, and others remain seriously ill.

The outbreak has dominated national headlines, with the spread described as “unprecedented and explosive”. As of 12:30 pm on 1 April 2026, 21 confirmed cases have been linked to the meningitis B strain, with two deaths reported.

The situation triggered a large-scale public health response, including a vaccination programme and the distribution of preventative antibiotics to thousands of people identified as close contacts. While officials say the peak may now have passed, the cluster has raised urgent questions about how meningitis spreads — particularly among young people in close-contact social settings.

“Meningitis isn’t some story from the nineties,” insists Danielle. “It’s happening today — in teenagers at parties and in young kids at nursery. People think it’s rare, but when it hits, it kills within hours.”

In her case, Cici’s doctors suggested the toddler might have had a mild infection, which made her more vulnerable. “It lives in the noses and throats of healthy people,” Danielle explains. “Most never know they carry it. But if it gets into the bloodstream or brain, you’re in real trouble. And you’ve got maybe four or five hours before it’s too late.”

Meningococcal bacteria are commonly carried in the nose and throat without causing harm, but can be transmitted through prolonged close contact — including coughing, sneezing, kissing, or sharing drinks, cutlery and even vapes, which has been highlighted in the Kent student cases.

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The MenB vaccine finally became part of the NHS baby programme in 2015 — three years too late for Cici. Danielle’s younger daughter, Mitzi, now 12, was one of the first to receive it. “She had a massive reaction — swollen legs, fever — which the doctor said was good news. It showed she already had antibodies, probably because of me.”

Her teenage sons, Joey, 19, and Ellis, 17, have not been vaccinated. “They both had exposure to the virus when Cici died, so doctors think they have natural immunity. But if I hadn’t known that, I’d be queuing round the block.”

The danger, she says, lies in how ordinary meningitis begins. “Cici didn’t have the rash at first. It’s not always there. She just looked tired, floppy and cold, like she wanted to sleep. Every parent needs to know the warning signs — cold hands and feet, a high fever, confusion, vomiting, mottled skin, a high-pitched cry.”

She’s haunted by thoughts of the “what ifs”. “If she’d been in our room instead of next door, if we hadn’t had that flight delay and we hadn’t let her play in the soft play area where she might have picked it up… you can torture yourself with it.

"But you can’t change it. All I can do is make sure people know.” In the aftermath, Danielle vanished from TV. The bubbly Manchester girl who once fronted CITV in the late 90s alongside Stephen Mulhern and voiced cheery introductions to Teletubbies became a shadow of herself.

“For ten years I was like a ghost,” she says. “I’d go through the motions, look after my kids, but I wasn’t me anymore. I couldn’t imagine ever being happy again.”

She and Dean threw themselves into charity work, raising tens of thousands of pounds for meningitis research. They later welcomed two more children — Mitzi and then Chase, now seven — though it wasn’t easy. Danielle endured five miscarriages between the two.

“I call Mitzi and Chase my rainbow babies,” she says. “They brought light back into our house.”

The family built a play gazebo at the local school in Cici’s name. “There’s a beautiful photo of her inside. When her classmates left primary school, one of the mums lined all the girls up in front of it for a picture — like Cici was still part of the group. I sobbed.”

Lockdown was the turning point. “Dean and I were both low. He said, ‘You’ve got to do what makes you happy.’ And I said, ‘I want Danielle back.’”

By chance, when she accompanied her husband to a TalkSport interview, she ran into her old CITV producer, Steve Ryde. “It was serendipity,” she says. Within weeks, she was offered work on TalkTV, hosting The Late Night Phone-In with Andre Walker. “Some had agent had just told me I was ‘on the wrong side of 40’ to relaunch my career. But that actually spurred me on.”

She’s since become a confident voice again — fun, sharp, Northern, and unfiltered. “At 19, I was told not to sound too Manc. Now that accent’s my superpower,” she laughs.

Danielle is also in the process of filming a family reality-style YouTube series — her tongue-in-cheek answer to “the Manchester Kardashians” — featuring Dean and their football-mad kids. “They love it,” she says. “It’s chaos, but joyful chaos.”

Her former on-screen partner, Stephen Mulhern, now one of ITV ’s biggest primetime stars, remains one of her closest friends.

“We lived together for three years in a flat in Manchester,” she says. “He drove straight up from London the minute he heard about Cici. That’s what kind of guy he is.”

The pair still meet once or twice a year. “He makes me howl laughing. Last month I went to watch him film Deal or No Deal and he played an April Fool on me the next day — told me I’d posted something controversial on Instagram. Everything I post is pretty vanilla usually! He loves to wind me up but our relationship is like brother and sister.

Would she ever team back up with him on TV? “We’d both love to. I think we’d be brilliant on Gogglebox or a fun Friday show. The problem is I’m Z-list, and he’s A-list!” she grins.

Behind the humour, she admits grief never vanishes — it just changes shape. “I have what I call my ghost child. There’s always a space between Ellis and Mitzi where Cici sits in my head. I imagine her at each age — what she’d look like, how tall she’d be. I think most parents who lose a child understand that.”

The first years, she says, were pure survival. “I used to go to bed and pray to die in my sleep. Every morning, for a split second, I’d forget — and then it would hit me again. The dread is unbearable. No one tells you grief feels physical, like being winded every day.”

What eventually pulled her through were her other children. “They didn’t let me stay on the sofa and cry. They needed packed lunches, clean PE kits, love. That’s what saved me.”

After Cici’s death, the family lived in Scotland for several years, where Dean was playing for Falkirk. Danielle trained as a breastfeeding support worker, helping new mums after traumatic births.

“I called myself a ‘breast mate’,” she says with a laugh. “We’d turn up at 3 a.m. with tea and toast, telling mums, ‘You can do this, one night at a time.’ It was all voluntary.”

That work, she believes, gave her a purpose again. “Helping other women stopped me from feeling useless.” She later set up a group for women with postnatal depression that won a £50,000 National Lottery grant.

“Scotland was miles ahead of England for that kind of thing,” she says proudly.

Danielle now uses her platform to discuss grief, motherhood, and mental health openly. “We’re all going to be touched by loss eventually. Brits are awful at talking about death. We think stiff upper lip, carry on — but we need to have the conversations.”

Her biggest message today is practical: get the MenB vaccine. “If you’re reading this and your baby or teen hasn’t had it — book it. Don’t think it will happen to you. Those kids who died in Kent last month were just at a club. That’s how fast meningitis spreads.”

Fourteen years on, the memories still make her voice shake. “People ask if time heals. It doesn’t. You just learn to live with the hole,” she says. “Cici’s part of everything I do. When my show goes out, I still look up and say, ‘That was for you, baby girl.’”

Danielle smiles softly. “I’ll never stop being her mum. But if by telling our story one parent recognises those symptoms, then maybe she’s still saving lives.”

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