For Vanessa, radio is where her heart is

Relaxing in the plush settings of the BBC Radio building in Marylebone, VANESSA Feltz suddenly gets serious, leans forward in her chair and tells me: “I sometimes find myself lying awake at night thinking about the stories of my listeners.”
It is exactly what you would expect from Feltz, whose eponymous weekday radio talk show galvanizes Londoners to ring in on the hot topics of the day, often sharing deeply personal experiences.
“I hope that if I care about an issue, if it’s worrying or bugging or exciting me, that my listeners will care about it as well,” she says.
“It’s all about the way you present it, using real sincerity and not being fake. It’s reassuring for the listeners to know that you mean what you say, even if they might not agree with you.”
Feltz puts a lot of passion into her work and gets it back in spades from her listeners, who she claims are passionate about world issues, London issues, local issues, sexual, emotional issues…
“Anything at all! My listeners are passionate full stop. They can be exceedingly passionate about something like knife crime, or passionate about the new directive of parents not sleeping in beds with their babies, or incredibly passionate about things like the inauguration of Barack Obama, which had Londoners crying!
“The great connecting tissue is their passion, which is not confined to one particular thing.”
The 47-year old is a chatty, engaging and eloquent interviewee, exactly as she comes across on her radio show, where she often teases out personal stories from her audience.
“As the years go by, I’m more and more affected by their stories.
“Some listeners will ring in and tell you something they’ve never told anyone else before. It really connects you to the human condition.
“We have half a million listeners but it’s still a very intimate show – and incredibly real.”
Perhaps part of the reason why her listeners are so willing to open up to her is due to the well-documented problems in her own personal life.
She famously lost five stone following a painful marriage break-up when Michael Kurer, the father of her two daughters cheated on her.
She ended up in a relationship with Dennis Duhaney, the personal trainer who had helped her slim down.
But things went pear-shaped when her Trisha-style BBC show was axed amid accusations that the guests were actors from an agency.
She continued to garner the wrong sort of headlines for her minor meltdown on Celebrity Big Brother in 2001 where she scrawled on the house table in chalk and screamed obscenities at producers.
With characteristic indomitability, she has bounced back, forging a successful career in radio as well as making appearances on other reality TV shows, including Celebrity Wife Swap.
Her genuine engagement with her listeners has now been recognised with a Sony Radio Academy Award.
“I’m delighted and thrilled to pieces!” she exclaims. “It’s great to receive some kind of national recognition for what is essentially a local show.
“Awards matter to everyone, from the listener who thinks they’ve picked the right show to listen to, to the [production] team who work really hard on a shoestring from the early hours of dawn every morning. Three hours of live radio is quite taxing for any team to put together.”
Feltz’s broadcasting career has spanned nearly three decades, including stints on The Big Breakfast, The Wright Stuff, Celebrity Fit Club, and her own television talk shows on ITV and the BBC.
Now engaged to musician Ben Ofoedu, former lead singer of Phats and Small, who she describes as “the loveliest, friendliest guy”, and with a weekly column in the Daily Express, Feltz seems much happier in the slightly less conspicuous world of radio.
“Radio is more fun, immediate, and more genuine,” she explains. “I can respond to my listeners and let them take the show in a different direction, whereas television is all prescribed in advance. It is the most immediate, reactive broadcasting you can do. I love it passionately.”
Feltz is also currently in the application selection process for One and Other, a project in which sculptor Antony Gormley is looking for members of the public to occupy the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square this summer for an hour each, 24 hours a day for 100 consecutive days.
“It’s a wonderful project. What is more representative of art than the human form?”
She says she has not yet decided what she will do if she gets a turn on the plinth. “Maybe I will broadcast,” she wonders out loud. “I heard some people are getting naked but I don’t think I will join them.”

Feltz, a Cambridge graduate with a first-class degree in English, has lived in North London her entire life, describing it as “the only place on Earth.”
Born in Islington, she grew up in Totteridge and lived in a large family home in Hampstead Garden Suburb before moving to St John’s Wood after her divorce.
“St John’s Wood is totally different to Hampstead Garden Suburb – there is city life, it is exciting and fun.
“I can be more anonymous there. Whereas Hampstead Garden Suburb is quieter, more of a place for a nuclear family.
I would love to live in Hampstead one day. I am getting closer and closer!”