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Vanessa Feltz
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vanessa Feltz (born February 21, 1962) is an English journalist and broadcaster.
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Vanessa Feltz was born in Islington and grew up in Totteridge, which on her radio show she frequently refers to as "the Beverly Hills of North London". She also describes her middle-class Jewish background as like "growing up in Fiddler on the Roof". She was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls, an independent school in North West London. She then went on to study English at Trinity College, Cambridge.
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After graduating from Cambridge with a First Class Honours Degree, she moved from temping work to writing for The Jewish Chronicle, then the Daily Mirror. She often specialised in sex advice, even writing for top shelf magazine Men Only. She also presented a Jewish radio show on BBC GLR (now BBC London 94.9).
She replaced Paula Yates on Channel 4 morning TV show The Big Breakfast presenting a regular item where she interviewed celebrities while in a bed. She also presented a show called Value for Money similar to the BBC's Watchdog.
Her career peaked when she presented the ITV daytime television chat show Vanessa made by independent TV company, Anglia Television. She moved to the BBC to host a similar show, The Vanessa Show, in 1998 in a reported £2 million deal, when demands for a doubling of her wages to £2.75m million fell on deaf ears. [1] ITV replaced her show with Trisha.
Also mentioned during a Harry Hill sketch as Number 3 in the "National Index of A Big Face".
In 1999, her show was cancelled when it was revealed that some guests were actors from an agency. At the same time, it was rumoured that she had insisted on using junior members of the production crew for running personal errands - most notably, the purchase of chocolate bars (sometimes ordering taxis specifically for this purpose). BBC One controller Peter Salmon said the bad publicity had effectively killed the show. [2]
Vanessa Feltz was a contestant on the first British version of Celebrity Big Brother in 2001, but was the second person evicted by public vote. This was after showing signs of an apparently underlying mental illness when she scrawled on the house table with chalk and screamed an obscenity at the voice of Big Brother. Despite this Feltz is an avid fan of Big Brother. She has appeared on its Channel 4 spin-off shows Big Brother's Big Mouth on numerous occasions and has also recently appeared on an episode of Big Brother's Little Brother. It has been speculated that this devotion to the show actually helped revive her media career, rather than to destroy it.
In May 2003, she was voted the 93rd worst Briton in Channel 4's poll of the 100 Worst Britons, due to perceived media over-exposure and poor judgement when choosing television appearances.
She made an appearance in a sketch in the first episode of the second series of the BBC comedy sketch show Little Britain, playing a spokesperson for fictional slimming club Fat Fighters. In 2004, she appeared in the second series of the reality TV show, Celebrity Fit Club, in a bid to lose weight.
In recent years Feltz has been a regular guest on The Wright Stuff and presented two series of Cosmetic Surgery Live, both screened on Five.
Since late 2005, she has been presenting a three-hour radio show on BBC London 94.9, from 9:00 to noon Monday to Saturday. The show is a phone-in on current topics, with occasional studio guests. She also writes a weekly column on her views on topical subjects which is published in the Tuesday Daily Express newspaper.
In December 2006 she made a comeback to ITV as the host of the talk show Vanessa's Real Lives, and she recently played herself in an episode of the BBC comedy drama series Hotel Babylon. This was followed in April 2007 by her participation in an episode of Channel 4's Celebrity Wife Swap, in which Vanessa moved in with magician Paul Daniels for one week, while his wife Debbie McGee moved in with Vanessa's fiance, Ben Ofoedu. She discussed the appeared on ITV1's 'Loose Women' programme, on 13th April, berating Daniels and discussing her relationship with Ofoedu.
On 22 September 2007 Vanessa Feltz and her Musician fiance, Ben Ofoedu struggled to get the correct answers but eventually won £150 000 for a Cancer Charity on the celebrity version of ITV's Who wants to be a millionaire.
Feltz married Michael Kurer, a surgeon, in 1985. They have two adult daughters, Allegra (born 1986) who is a trainee lawyer, and Saskia (born 1989). Kurer left Feltz in 1999.
Currently she is engaged to Ben Ofoedu, former lead singer of Phats and Small.
During the break-up of her marriage, she lost six stones (84 lbs, 38 kg) and reduced from a dress size 24 to a size 12, but she gained much of the weight back. She has recently mentioned that she has been losing weight since April 2006, and has lost 36 lbs[citation needed].
she now cuts a sad state on the dance foor of a night club near you