Written by 
The Imperial Hotel in Cork, decked out in all its Christmas finery, is the perfect setting for my meeting with Vanessa Feltz.
The radio host, broadcaster, journalist and author is sparkly, effervescent, and colourful — literally and figuratively.
Feltz has just written her autobiography, Vanessa Bares All, and is on a whistle-stop tour promoting it. She is no stranger to Cork, or more specifically, East Cork.
She calls buying a home in Ballycotton “one of the few really excellent decisions I’ve made”.
Her love affair with East Cork stemmed from reading about Myrtle Allen and Ballymaloe in a magazine in a gynaecologist’s waiting room in 1994.
Subsequent visits to Ballymaloe over the years only cemented her passion for the area, and in 2017 she bought her Ballycotton house, which she’s christened ‘Ballykneidel’ — a mix of Irish and Jewish culture, meaning “place of the matzo ball”.
It’s clear when speaking with her, that this love for East Cork isn’t just lip service, there’s real grá here, and Feltz and her family — her two daughters and four grandchildren — have well and truly assimilated into the community.
“They play the fiddle and we have sessions in the house, and the sensation of watching them doing it is the most marvellous thing, and so unexpected from a Jewish family from northwest London.
“We always say, when you come out of Cork airport, you turn left to East Cork [not right to West Cork]. It’s like going into first class on a plane; you turn left, and then you get to magnificent East Cork.”
When she’s not dining in all the restaurants in East Cork, or popping into the many coffee shops, book shops, or monthly Carrigtwohill car boot sale (“yes, we love a good car boot sale!”), Feltz and her family are bundling up in their anoraks and walking along Ballynamona beach.
“I know the sun isn’t always shining, but whenever we come over it always shines a bit,” she says.
“And never once, not even once in the eight years of having my own house here, and all the years of coming before that, which is about 20 years, I’ve never once, ever, been ready to go home.”
This is Feltz’s first, and only, autobiography and despite living a very public life for three decades, the book offers new insights into her life, from her childhood and relationship with her parents, all the way through to the crushing break-up with partner Ben Ofoedu in 2023 after 16 years together.
“I certainly didn’t think the world would be a lesser place for not hearing my story,” she says.
“I didn’t feel compelled to tell anyone about it but I was approached by literary agent Eugenie Furniss, which was very flattering. I thought, if it were 10 years later I might be dead. You have to do these things while there’s a market for it. ‘Strike while the iron is hot’ as they say, and the iron is still hot.”
The iron is indeed hot for Feltz, whose career is still going strong after 35 years.
She hosts a radio show on LBC Radio, appears regularly on This Morning, and writes a column for the Daily Express.
Feltz is often called the most hard-working woman in showbiz. I ask her if it ever feels like hard work.
“No, I love it,” she says. “I was in with Maura and Dáithí on The Today Show earlier, and they said ‘when you come in, we always know that you’re going to come bounding in full of enthusiasm’, which is a lovely thing to say, but it’s how I really feel. I’m pleased to be alive, and pleased to be working, and pleased to be doing such a great, fun job. Especially this latest thing, where I’m constantly talking about myself — my favourite subject, obviously.”
During our hour-long chat, it’s clear that Feltz loves talking, full stop. She’s made her living from it after all. From her first appearance on radio in 1989, it was clear that Feltz could talk, and entertain.
“From the very first time I was in the studio on a niche show as an unpaid guest, I could just talk, and I liked doing it,” she says.
“Most people, once you give them a microphone they’re embarrassed, they stumble over their words. But to my amazement, I was confident doing it, and I still am.”
In her book, Feltz recounts her first radio appearance as most definitely not “a parapet moment”.
She writes: “The rest of us got famous by mistake, just by drudging along at our day jobs. We never had the chance to think, Woah, there! What’s that? OK, that’s the parapet! Right, I am now of sound mind, have weighed up the consequences and am taking the deliberate decision to crane my head and peer over the thing. It’s not like that at all. There’s no parapet moment.”
Parapet or not, the niche radio appearance began Feltz’s long media career, where she has had her own TV show called Vanessa; mixed it up on the famous, or rather, infamous, Big Breakfast bed with A-listers galore; hosted radio talk shows on BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio London, appeared on Celebrity Big Brother and I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!, become a regular on This Morning, and inevitably, appeared on many tabloid front pages over the years.
Living her life in the public eye meant the divorce from her husband in 1999 was fodder for the British media, but for Feltz, the public nature of her divorce was the least of her worries.
“My heart was broken, and still is, because I believed in that marriage absolutely, implicitly and wholeheartedly,” she says.
“I really thought we were incredibly happily married. I think that the public nature of it was almost irrelevant, really, because the pain of it was so excruciating, and I was trying to shepherd my two girls through it, while also trying to understand it myself. Did I mind that Mrs Jones of Scunthorpe also knew about it? Not particularly. This time around though, this latest breakup has been made much more difficult by being so public.”
Feltz is referring to her breakup in early 2023 with Ben Ofoedu — or One Hit Wonder (OHW) as she refers to him in her book.
“This ex has ceaselessly availed himself of the opportunity to sell the story, and every few weeks is another sale of the same story,” she says. “I never know it’s happening, and each time I’m shocked to see it and hurt.”
You feel this hurt from Feltz, both in the book and in person. The two major breakups in her life have left indelible marks on her.
You see, for Feltz, marriage was very much the ultimate goal. From an early age, her parents brought her up to be married.
But for Feltz, it was about more than just being married; relatably, she wanted to be happy and in love.
“I really wish I had chosen better,” she says. “It’s a shame because I’d love to be having a happy ever after story. That’s what I was hoping for. I was once asked if I could have had a happy marriage instead of a career, what would I have chosen? And without hesitating I would say a happy marriage, forget the whole career thing, right? But unfortunately, you don’t get to pick and choose these things.”
Writing this book meant Feltz had to revisit these and other upsetting times in her life.
“I felt many different things writing this book: I felt scared of turning into some kind of weird egomaniac, where every time I went upstairs, or looked out the window, needed to be faithfully recorded — as if I was Boswell to my own Dr Johnson. And of course, I felt pretty sad writing some of it, because there are things that I put behind in my life that I then had to dig up with vigour, because I didn’t want to just barely reconstitute them, I wanted to do this in such a way that it’s convincing and vibrant.”
It is both. As you read the early years of Feltz’ life, you witness how she spent that time striving for her parents’ approval, never quite getting it.
“My mother seemed to be incapable or unwilling to ever think it was great to have me as a child. It seemed that she really would have liked to exchange me for a different one, even though I was compliant and hard working and earnest and diligent. I was just trying to earn her praise and a kind of acceptance. But somehow I never managed it,” she says.
But you also feel Feltz’s devastation when her mother died aged just 57, an age that she says loomed large in her life for a long time.
“I thought I might very well die when I was the same age as my mother. I think when you have a parent that passes away very young or stupidly early, you can’t really imagine yourself being older than they were. When I got to 57, I started working out the number of weeks, days, months after that, that my mother died. And I kept thinking, ‘when is that day?’ Okay, if I get to, August the something or other of the year that I’m 57, I’ll be a day older than she ever lived. And here I am now, five years older”.
It’s clear with her book that words are her business, and through them you get a real insight into Feltz and her life. This isn’t a tick-the-box vanity project, there is real heart here.
As we chat I mention a particularly amusing sentence from the book which caught my attention about a break up with an early boyfriend: “Prince Charmless’ charms charmed me less.”
Feltz looked pleased to have her way with words brought up, stating: “I really do mind whether people think it’s well written or not. I wanted it to be well written. Otherwise I wouldn’t have wanted to do it at all. I don’t want to write some rubbish — a horrible, ugly gallop through my life. I wanted it to be proper and enjoyable to read.”
It is just that. An enjoyable read, where you get to know the main protagonist intimately. And you’re rooting for her, well at least, I am, hoping that she finds that fairytale ending.
“I hope that love is possible,” she muses.
“I don’t know for sure if it will be, but I certainly hope it will. I don’t think I’m designed to be on my own. I don’t think it suits my personality. I like to be companionable. I like to have someone to chat with, to cuddle with, to share things with, and to walk on Ballynamona beach with. I’m not in a terrible, frantic scramble to do it, but I would like it to happen at some point soon.”
- Vanessa Bares All, published by Penguin, is out now