Media Guardian

Uncovering the Vanessa ShowJournalist, broadcaster, and reality TV star, Vanessa Feltz opens up about family, friends, and fame

message has been left. I reluctantly key in the right numbers and listen to the message. “Hi, its Vanessa”, a clipped tone says. “You’re not here, I live on the road with the houses. If you want to come and talk to me, you’ve got to come and find me.” Telling off number two. My mouth turns to sandpaper as I make my way to the next house, absolutely dreading who, or what, I might find. As I walk to the door, I hear her loud, excitable, trademark voice emanating through the glass, and immedi-ately I am comforted. I’m welcomed into her house by an immacu-lately dressed woman wearing a frilly red top and black trousers, plati-num blonde hair flaw-lessly straightened, and a face which is perfectly made up. Not bad for a woman who’s spent all morning on the radio! As she finishes talking to her uncle, her phone rings, indicating she is a woman in demand. There’s a poster on the wall advertising her award winning BBC ra-dio show, which features

a flattering picture of her, accompanied by the text, “Hear jaws dropping”, and I’m beginning to see why. She sees her uncle out, leaving me alone in the kitchen for a minute

or so, and bids him an affectionate adieu, call-ing out after him, “lots of love.” Finally we sit down, she offers me a coke, which I’m in des-perate need of, and asks

Vanessa Feltz has told me off twice in the last 24 hours. First is the rendezvous planning disaster.“1pm tomorrow, my house”, she de-mands, after agreeing to be interviewed. I make the mistake of tentatively asking if we could make it slightly later, to which she angrily retorts: “You don’t get to ask me that, I’m doing you a colossal favour here. You don’t get to make demands of me!” “Ok”, I quickly agree, immediately thinking how best I can change my already made appointments to suit Va-nessa Feltz, “1pm it is.” I am genuinely terrified. I stand outside her house, 24 hours later, ringing the bell. I rea-son with myself that if by seven rings she still hasn’t answered, there must be a problem, so it is perfectly reasonable to call. So I call, telling her I’m outside, and she says she’ll come and let me in. But five minutes later, and there’s still no sign of her. It is only then that I realise that I’ve been standing outside the wrong house! I look down at my phone, and see that an answerphone

Media Guardian

Uncovering the Vanessa ShowJournalist, broadcaster, and reality TV star, Vanessa Feltz opens up about family, friends, and fame

her radio show, the first being programme pre-senter of the year at the Frank Gillard Awards in late 2008, and the more recent win as Speech Radio Personality of the Year at the 27th Sony Radio Academy Awards in May 2009. And so, I begin by congratulat-ing her, whilst asking why she thinks this has been so much more successful than her chat shows. But rather than focus contentedly on her successes, she chooses instead to jump on the defensive, once again. “My chat shows haven’t been successful?” she asks, horrified. “The Vanessa show lasted for about eight years, and then I was poached by the BBC for a great deal of money and made an enormous amount of fanfare because it was such a success.” Imme-diately Ian Parker’s cruel but perhaps credible statement in the Guard-ian that “Vanessa Feltz … can communicate only one thing, which is her own magnificence” springs to mind. “The secret of success of my radio show?” she eventu-ally attempts to answer,

“I don’t know, really- what do you think?” An interview last year explained her success on the radio by stating: “Vanessa, we feel your pain, and you feel ours, and that’s probably why you are speech radio personal-ity of the year.” The judges of the Sony Radio Academy Award concurred, claiming she “brings humanity and an authentic personality to her programmes.” And they’re right. But does she agree? “It may be be-cause people feel they know me”, she says. “I’ve been a tabloid creature for 18 years, they know I’ve been divorced, they know I’m fat, they know that my mother died at 57…” The fat card didn’t take long. But the bringing up of her divorce and the loss of her mother to cancer is more telling, especially as it is just the first of several appear-ances they are to make in the short interview. “The TV show I used to present I was down among the people”, she continues. “I seemed to be approachable, I didn’t

how long the interview is going to take. I’m so afraid by this point I tell her however long she wants. “Half an hour?” she says, but I know that this is rhetorical. “That’s

perfect” I ecstatically reply, although I was hoping for a bit longer. In the last 18 months, Vanessa has been the recipient of two separate awards for

it to her, she tried every possible way she coul-doconceive of to create some sort of rapport with Paul Daniels, whom she lived with for two weeks on Celebrity Wife Swap in 2007, but to no avail.

“He was a cantanker-ous git of a fellow”, she says, before the ques-tion is even finished. “He was just difficult for no reason at all”, she continues, sounding a bit hurt. “I also think he had a preconception about me. He dislikes all journalists, and although I am a journalist, I’ve also been at the receiv-ing end of a great deal of nasty snipey horrible journalism. So yes I’m a journalist, but it’s not re-

“He was a can-tankerous git of a fellow...”

“Although I’m a journalist its not really fair to dislike me on those grounds because I know how it feels to be ripped open in the press...”

Media Guardianseem either frighteningly beautiful or scarily intel-ligent.” With a deliber-ate emphasis on seem, she implies that when it comes to her public profile, all is not neces-sarily as it appears. But I’ve come up with my own interpretation. She may seem rather abrupt, outspoken, (and has most certainly frightened me over the last 24 hours), but after only a few short minutes, one thing is for sure-Vanessa Feltz is definitely approachable. “I certainly don’t think there’s a Vanessa shaped gap on the TV while they wait for me”, she concludes, with a pragmatic, and down to earth view of her own importance. Either way she’s not bothered, because she’s having the time of her life. “I think you can do more on the radio, she says. “You can cover a much wider breadth of topics and anyone can ring up. I think that’s what makes it worth listening to. I find that by the end of the show, I’ve changed my mind, and at my age I think that’s brilliant, because you don’t want be too set in your ways, you don’t want to think you know everything already. The best thing you could pos-sibly know is that you don’t know everything at all, and that somebody else might know better.”

Cooking, for Vanessa, is just one of these things. Having just finished filming Celebrity’s Restaurant in Our Living

Room, due to be aired at the end of March, she makes it very clear that cooking is not a passion of hers, and this I can tell by the immaculate, almost clinical kitchen we are sitting in. She doesn’t hesitate, howev-er, to tell me that “eating is!” “One of the reasons I thought it was worth getting decent A-levels and a decent degree from Cambridge was that I could pay someone else in a restaurant to cook for me”, she admits. “I’m delighted it’s over, but it was a very steep learning curve,” she continues. “I cooked diligently, planned diligently, and got up at three to fold napkins. I was doing it for real, absolutely play-ing by the rules, which I subsequently realised were my rules, rather than the rules. They were open to interpretation, and I found it an interest-ing life lesson. You think there’s only one of doing it, the way you do it, but it’s not true at all, there are all sorts of way of doing it.”And you’ve got to give

ally fair to dislike me on those grounds because I know how it feels to be ripped open in the press.” She manages to portray this very matter-of-factly, but the tinge of regret embedded in her somewhat unfairly criti-cal portrayal in the me As I tentatively bring up her rather memorable performance on Celebrity Big Broth-er, I manage to elicit a small laugh. Many saw her as somewhat vulner-able, and insecure, was this the real Vanessa, I want to know, or is she always as confident as she seems? “It was complete-ly real at the time”, she answers honestly. “No-one ever knows how they are going to react to anything until they’ve done it. You’d hope you’d be courageous and marvellous but you might not be”, she says before allowing for a brief pause. For once Vanessa Feltz is lost for words. “I don’t really know why it was so ex-treme actually but it just was”, she continues. “I was much too influenced by the fact that there was barbed wire and big dogs and a big door that slammed. My children were over a bridge and as we walked in I could see them over the dis-tance, and it was the first time I’d been separated from them since they’d

At home with Ben

“I enjoy being in the public eye but when some-thing awful hap-pens like your marriage falling apart and peo-ple start rifling through your dustbins then I dont...”

“Anyone who says it isn’t nice when people look excited to see you is ly-ing because it is-it’s huge, it’s massive for the ego, and a big bloody thrill.”

Making no secret of their love

been born, my divorce was incredibly recent and very heartbreaking so I wasn’t in a very hap-py and secure frame of mind anyway, and as my children disappeared this big door clanged.” No doubt about it, Vanessa’s two daughters, Saskia and Allegra, are her life. And if the kitchen has no use for cooking, it certainly has a use for showcasing the immense love she has for her family, as pictures of her and her daughters fill the otherwise plain room. “I don’t blame anyone”, she continues. “I think I had far too much time to think, and I’d had a really bruising time of it very recently. The format’s really hor-rible as well, you have to suck up to people all day and then betray them at night, and I suppose it felt very similar to what my husband had done to

me-it didn’t feel right or nice doing it”, she says. “So what was the ques-tion again?” as she loses herself for the second time. “I think it was definitely the real me”, she decides, proudly, forgetting that she has, in fact, already answered the question. “It was all completely genuine, but I’d like to think if I was in that position now I wouldn’t do that. I’m years along from my divorce, I’m very happy

with my partner, and I don’t feel the same kind of terrible heartache I felt then”, she says, as she flashes the big rock on her finger, symbolis-ing her engagement to one hit wonder, Ben Ofoedu of Phats and Small. “I don’t regret going in there, though. I was vulnerable … it was my real self but not

my self at my best”, she concludes, happy with this final assessment. What with her ever present place in the media, I assume it’s a given that she likes being in the public eye, but she’s quick to correct me. “Yes and no”, she begins. “I enjoy being in the public eye if things are good, and if I’m

looking nice. But obvi-ously when something awful happens like your marriage falling apart and mother dying and people stop to ask you for your autograph and people take pictures of your children and start rifling through your dustbins then you don’t. I also don’t like the idea that if I did something stupid or unwise like Ashley Cole or John Terry style it would be

splashed all over the tabloids and everyone would know, so it puts a lid on my behaviour.” Never appearing as one who does care about what people think, it makes you wonder exactly how far she would go if it were all systems go. But Vanes-sa Feltz certainly does care, more than she’d have you believe. So what does she actually like about be-ing famous? “I love when people love me and love the show,” she continues. “And

anyone who says it isn’t nice when people look excited to see you is ly-ing-because it is nice, it’s a great feeling, it’s huge, it’s massive for the ego, and a big bloody thrill. You know, my mum’s dead”, which may appear to be a random com-ment, but the impres-sion I’m getting is that

“My future plans are to be-come mother of the bride, and do it gracefully, which is diffi-cult...

“I’ve been very well known now for 17 years and the ideal thing for me would be to have all the fun of the ca-reer without the fame.”

Media Guardian

It all gets too much in the Big Brother house

With Matthew Wright after win-ning her Sony award

fame, for Vanessa Feltz, is intended as a sup-pressant, a drug, to get her through the difficult life events which she has had to endure, and give her the security that she otherwise wouldn’t have. “To have people looking really pleased to see me is nice and is a relief”, she continues. “I don’t kid myself that they genuinely love me and that if I died they’d be heartbroken, I know they wouldn’t, it’s still on the superficial level- nice. But the scrutiny, the censure and press derision, intrusion into private life, the fact that you cant make mistakes like other people can without people knowing

and the fact that your children probably cant either is quite horrible. Anything you’ve ever said comes up again and again- it will never go away- never.” “On reflection my ideal thing would be to be incredibly success-ful, incredibly rich, and totally anonymous, and that’s why I’m amazed that someone like Alan Sugar or Duncan Ban-natyne would want a public profile”, she pon-ders. “They’re already rich and hugely success-ful and they’re admired by their peers. Why do they want people to know about them? They could do it quietly, they could enjoy it without people knowing about them, without that scru-tiny.” But so could she have done, I remind her, and didn’t she say that everyone loves being recognised? Anyone, perhaps, who needs the reassurance that they are loved. “Obviously I’ve had ample chance to think about this”, she continues. “I’ve been very well known for

about 17 years, and re-ally the ideal thing for me would be to have all the fun of the career but without the fame.” Bearing all this in mind, what’s next for Va-nessa? “My daughter’s getting married, how about that? My daugh-ter’s getting married!”, she exclaims, perking up immediately. Ultimately, family is most important. “My future plans are to become mother of the bride, and do it graceful-ly, which is quite diffi-cult, because it’s a differ-ent role from what I’m used to playing, there’s another family involved. I’ve got to try and keep the peace and try not to be a control freak about it, and try and realise its not actually my wed-ding”, she laughs. “Career wise, I hope to carry on with the BBC, take any opportu-nities that come my way, and if they don’t they don’t, and if they do then great. I’ve had some ex-cellent career breaks and some great opportuni-ties.” Anyone who thinks she takes what she has for granted is wrong. “I love my radio show, and do it with every ounce of passion I can possibly summon up, and I hope to carry on doing it and win some more awards, that would be nice!” It’s been 24 hours since that first terrifying phonecall. Gone is the

defensive, outspoken, and abrupt woman who greeted me 24 hours ago, and in her place is the real personality, totally unaffected by the fame which she’s had an enduring love-hate rela-tionship with for the last 17 years. And as I walk out of her house, she bids me an affectionate adieu, calling out after me, “lots of love.”