Vanessa Feltz
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Vanessa Feltz (born February 21, 1962) is an English journalist and broadcaster.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Vanessa Feltz was born in Islington and grew up in Totteridge. On her radio show she frequently refers to Totteridge as "the Beverly Hills of North London", and her middle-class Jewish background as like "growing up in Fiddler on the Roof". Her father Norman was in the lingerie business[1]. Her mother Valerie was a housewife who died from cancer at the age of 57 in 1995[2]. She has one sister. 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, England.
[edit] Career
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[edit] 1980's and 90's
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. [3] ITV replaced her show with Trisha.
In 1999, her BBC television show was cancelled when it was revealed that some guests were actors from an agency. BBC One controller Peter Salmon said the bad publicity had effectively killed the show. [4]
[edit] 2000 and on
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 stress when she scrawled on the house table with chalk and screamed an obscenity at the voice of Big Brother. Despite this Feltz is an active fan and commentator of Big Brother series. She has appeared on its spin-off shows Big Brother's Big Mouth and Big Brother's Little Brother on numerous occasions. It has been speculated that Vanessa's appearance on (and subsequent close association with) Big Brother actually helped revive her media career, rather than to destroy it.
In May 2003, she was voted 93rd [5] on to the list of worst Britons in Channel 4's poll of the 100 Worst Britons, due to perceived media over-exposure and poor judgement when choosing television appearances. Vanessa appeared along such 'worst' Britons as Tony Blair (no. 1 worst), Queen Elizabeth II (no. 10), and Andrew Lloyd Webber (no. 38).
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 spokeswoman 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, Monday to Saturday. She replaced previous host Jon Gaunt. 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 appearance 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 won £150,000 for a Cancer Charity on the celebrity version of ITV's Who Wants To Be a Millionaire.
[edit] Personal life
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), who is taking a gap year in Israel. Kurer left Feltz in 1999.
She is engaged to Ben Ofoedu, former lead singer of Phats and Small, whom she plans to marry during 2008.
She lives in St John's Wood in a house that was previously occupied by Reverend John Hugh Smyth-Piggott, and by Charles Saatchi, and which was featured in Sir John Betjeman's 1973 film Metro-land. [1]
During the break-up of her marriage, Feltz lost six stones in weight (38kg, 84 lbs) and reduced from a dress size 24 to a size 12, but she subsequently regained much of the weight. She has reported on her radio show that she has been slimming since April 2007, and has lost four and a half stones (29kg, 63 lbs).
