‘She’s definitely cashing in,’ says Vanessa Feltz of her surprising new screen rival the Duchess of Sussex. With Love, Meghan launched to great fanfare on Netflix, with an accompanying line in high-priced clothes and products for the home.
In contrast, this British broadcasting legend has put together a spoof of the show on YouTube, for her own amusement, with a budget of almost nothing.
‘It’s doing colossal business. We’re almost at the stage where With Love, Vanessa has more views than Meghan’s show and she got paid £80 million. I’ve been paid nil. I’m doing it with a piece of old string, Sellotape, some Hula Hoops and a Bag for Life.’
Americans have said that they love it, even if they have no idea who Vanessa is. ‘It’s good-natured,’ she says. ‘I don’t name her. I’m not trying to insult her at all.’
She hosts in a pink gingham dress, picking flowers in her north London garden and improvising household tips with all Meghan’s favourite words like ‘joyful’ and ‘elevating’: ‘So that you feel you can sparkle and sprinkle a little bit of my princessy Vanessa stardust on your life, even if it’s in a humble council flat in Stepney…’
She also has a new chat show of her own every lunchtime on Channel 5, so why spend time doing this?
‘I saw the first episode of With Love, Meghan and I thought, “Oh gosh.” Then I thought, “Instead of talking about it, I’ll just make one.”
That doesn’t mean she hasn’t got plenty to say now. ‘I don’t hate or despise her, I’m not one of her denigrators, but it’s as if no one explained, “You married Prince Harry. You’re the Duchess of Sussex now, this means you’re in one of the most exalted positions on Earth. So you don’t need to do a show in which you put pretzels in a bag and tie a bow on it.” That’s the sort of thing you do when you’re not married to a prince of the realm.’
Vanessa Feltz, 63, has a surprising new screen rival in the Duchess of Sussex with her new spoof show With Love, Vanessa on YouTube
Vanessa thinks the Duchess misunderstood her role when she married Harry.
‘Meghan didn’t seem to appreciate her own new place in the pecking order, which was so high that George and Amal Clooney – who clearly don’t know her – would come to the wedding.
‘Instead she downgraded herself to being effectively an ordinary jobbing celebrity getting a mark-up on a pair of trousers and a pair of sandals, which is a bit reality TV, isn’t it?’
As a star of reality TV herself, from Big Brother to Celebs Go Dating, Vanessa knows what she’s talking about.
‘If she was still an actress in Suits, would they give her the power to choose the things she’s selling? No. So I think she’s definitely cashing in. But is there anything wrong with that? I don’t think so, after all people don’t have to buy her expensive dresses or cashmere jumpers.’
What if the roles were reversed? ‘I’d be here living a royal life. I’d be an actual princess. I’d realise the world isn’t Disney. I’d appreciate how valued someone like Sophie Wessex is,’ says Vanessa firmly.
‘The Duchess of Edinburgh is doing this absolutely sterling job and is extremely appreciated by the British public. Princess Anne never stops working, we really respect her.
‘I have had the pleasure of being presented to her. She’s funny as hell. And I think Catherine’s stupendous. If I had been Meghan I would have realised how few people in the world get to do that job.’
In a pink gingham dress, picking flowers in her north London garden and improvising household tips with all Meghan’s favourite words like ‘joyful’ and ‘elevating, Vanessa has become a hit
Vanessa decided to host her own show after seeing the first episode of Meghan’s Netflix series – she thought ‘Instead of talking about it, I’ll just make one’
In her hilarious show Vanessa jokingly pours Hula Hoops in to a bag for life and ties it with a large pink bow – poking fun at Meghan re-packing pretzels for her guests
So what were Meghan’s options? ‘If she’d stayed, I think she would have been loved and I think she’d have had such a wonderful life. She could have tackled whatever she thought wasn’t nice at the palace. She’s got the guts. That’s what I would have done.
‘But I’m not her and no prince ever wanted to marry me, so don’t think I’ve confused myself with her, because I haven’t.’
The YouTube show has taken everybody by surprise, but we’re actually sitting in ITN’s London studios, where Vanessa has just presented the second episode of her new chat show.
She’s had a candid hour-long chat with her former Strictly partner James Jordan and his wife and fellow dancer Ola.
Vanessa took them both by surprise right away by confessing she had an instant crush on James when they were paired together in 2013.
‘For a really heady, insane 48 hours I fell passionately in love with you,’ she gushed, making James blush before she turned to Ola. ‘Then I remember you coming in to show me how to do a step and I woke up.’
That’s classic Feltz, revealing her own thoughts and desires in order to get guests talking. And it works, because James and Ola began to chat freely about everything from Strictly to their harrowing experience of IVF (they have a young daughter, but have given up the treatment after a miscarriage).
‘I’m trying to have a real conversation about what you really think or feel and what people want to know,’ says Vanessa. ‘On other shows, even if it’s Barack Obama or God Almighty Himself, they still only get eight minutes.’
Vanessa thinks the Duchess misunderstood her role when she married Harry – ‘she downgraded herself to being effectively an ordinary jobbing celebrity getting a mark-up on a pair of trousers and a pair of sandals, which is a bit reality TV, isn’t it?’
Vanessa is working seven days a week including on her new Channel 5 and is her third crack at a chat show after runs on ITV and the BBC in the 90s
This is her third crack at a chat show after runs on ITV and the BBC in the 90s, and she’s competing with her old mates on Loose Women for viewers.
Why are people always so ready to talk to her? ‘I’ve been in the public eye a long time. They know I’ve had a divorce and a horrible recent break-up. They know I’ve had massive weight problems and that I’ve been a single mum for the last 26 years. They know it hasn’t been a picnic, necessarily. But they also know I’m quite jolly most of the time. People think I will get what they’re going through.’
After her marriage to surgeon Michael Kurer ended in 2000 – they share two daughters, Allegra and Saskia, who have their own children – Vanessa had a 16-year relationship with the singer Ben Ofoedu, but wrote about his cheating in her autobiography.
He called her a woman of ‘no class’ in return.
After their break-up Vanessa went on Celebs Go Dating, but that didn’t work.
‘If you’re a man of sixty-something, why the hell would you do a programme like that? So the guys they served up were quite simply not my cup of tea. I didn’t succeed in finding true love’s kiss on that show.’
Has she found it since? ‘I haven’t. Actually, I’m proving to myself that I’m much more OK on my own than I thought I would be, because I did really dread it. I never wanted to be single. But I’m still here and I’ve got a brand new television show of my own, so it’s not bad, is it?’
She reveals ‘a brief skirmish’ with someone last year for a few months, but they kept that quiet.
Vanessa puts her ability tog et anyone talking down to her on life in the public eye from messy break-ups to single parenting and fluctuating weight problems
Vanessa had a 16-year relationship with the singer Ben Ofoedu, but wrote about his cheating in her autobiography (pictured together in October 2022)
‘It just fizzled out, which was fine by me. I’ve been on quite a few dates. Some have been all right, some haven’t.’
Vanessa talked about going out every night for the first year she was single, so has that calmed down?
‘No, it hasn’t stopped. I’m still doing that and it’s been two years and three months. More than 700 nights. I’ve been in for a maximum of two nights over the whole thing. I just don’t want to sit there on my own.’
Tonight it’s a daughter’s birthday, tomorrow the opening of a play, the day after a reunion with an old school friend, which she thinks is a date.
They may have to prepare for being talked about on air. In the first episode, she told viewers one beau had asked her for a photo of a very intimate place.
‘I can’t say who! I don’t think it’s that unusual for consorts to ask that. I think it’s a thing that happens, but as you heard me say on the show: “It’s not a thing you have to say yes to.”
Do men send her unsolicited pictures of their own bits? ‘Ugh.’ Vanessa screws up her face.
‘I get them from strangers on Insta.’ What are they hoping for? ‘I have no idea. Maybe they think someone will go, “Oh yeah, I love that.”
Her former colleagues on This Morning and Loose Women, are far from the bitter rivals they’re made out to be and have instead sent her words of encouragement and support
Zero chance, judging by her disgust. ‘I don’t know why they do it.’
Today’s TV phone-in was about if you should tell your partner they’ve put on weight; Vanessa is typically frank on her own struggles. ‘I wish Ozempic had been invented sooner. I wasn’t able to control the weight myself. I tried and tried and people could see me shedding stones then putting it back on. It was suggested I had a gastric bypass, which as you can see has worked.’
She does look healthy in the orange, white and blue dress she was just wearing on air.
‘The bypass cost a load of money. But I think it would be much better to spend 200 quid on some injection. I’d rather have had a small injection than two operations, any day.’
Vanessa is working seven days a week, with five episodes of the chat show and her politics and current affairs phone-in on LBC on Saturday and Sunday. This experienced journalist with a first-class Cambridge degree has an unusual ability to leap from the personal and frivolous to intensely serious politics and international affairs.
Then there’s With Love, Vanessa and a magazine column. What’s behind this relentless schedule? ‘My mum died at 57. I’m 63. Of course I don’t look it. It’s a miracle, I know. But I kind of feel the heat to do stuff. This is not the time to have a good rest.’
Given she’s proud of her appearance, does she go to the gym? ‘No. Never.’
What about skincare, as she’s on the telly every day? ‘Absolutely nothing at all.’ She cleans her face with soap and water. ‘I don’t use moisturiser. I’ve still got oily teenage skin, it never feels like it’s drying.’
Vanessa has joked she’ll soon have to be snapped up by Netflix as her show goes from strength to strength
The warpaint is another matter. ‘I do like make-up. I like false eyelashes. I like everything false, if I can get it,’ she says, chuckling. ‘Loads of Botox. I’ve been having it since I was 37. My husband left me and I was heartbroken and I looked at my face in a shop window andI thought, “Just because he left me, it doesn’t mean I have to walk around with these lines in my head for the rest of my life.” So I got Botox then and I’ve had it ever since, about twice a year.’
Vanessa went to a plastic surgeon about having work done on her neck, but he told her it would mean a facelift and refused to do it. ‘He wrote down in his file: ‘Face too good.’ I was swinging down the street going, ‘My face is too good!’
That was four years ago. ‘The face has probably sunk a bit since, hasn’t it? Maybe I’ve passed the facelift age, but if my face starts to put people off their lunch then maybe I’ll have to have something.’
In the meantime she can discuss the pressures of being a high-profile presenter with her former colleagues on This Morning and Loose Women, who she says are far from the bitter rivals they’re made out to be. ‘They are my actual, close, personal, real friends. I had lunch with Ruth Langsford on Friday. Cat Deeley sent me the loveliest message. Alison Hammond sent me love, Holly Willoughby I’ve heard from.
‘Everyone thinks of the audience as a cake, it gets sliced up in different directions. I would like a nice slice, maybe two slices. But I think there’s lots of cake for everybody,’ says Vanessa. ‘I’m not trying to smash or trounce anyone at all. I would just like people to enjoy the show, and to enjoy myself along the way.’
Vanessa, weekdays, 12.30pm, Channel 5, and stream on 5.
