Vanessa Feltz says she's 'a bit smashed up' by life as she opens up on personal tragedies
TV and radio star Vanessa Feltz has opened up on her life, saying that she was previously a very happy person but now feels 'a bit smashed up'
Vanessa Feltz has revealed that personal tragedies including broken relationships and losing her mum have left her struggling to preserve her happy-go-lucky personality.
The TV and radio star, 62, spoke candidly about problems she has faced and her battle to cope with them. "I think I used to be a really jolly, merry, happy kind of person," she said.
"And kind of bowling along for the next funny, good thing that was going to happen to me. When I think about it now, [I was] absolutely, ridiculously naive.
Vanessa, who has recently joined LBC, said she is not a moody person. "I'm not violent or anything like that, don't drink much," she said. "I'm a fairly straightforward and 'having a nice time' kind of a person I thought. And then I feel a bit smashed up by it all."
Vanessa married surgeon Michael Kurer in 1983 and they share daughters Saskia, 35, and Allegra, 38. The couple divorced in 2000. The presenter's mother, Valerie Ohrenstein, died in 1995 following a battle with endometrial cancer.
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Vanessa told the Stirring It Up podcast: "I feel like if you'd known me then, before life sort of imploded in various ways, I would have been a merrier guest for lunch. There have been some horrible career things, I lost my mum when she was just 57. I miss her every day, really every day and, for my girls, I felt I needed to be me and also her.
"When my husband left, I felt I needed to be him, so I had to be me, him, my mum. I felt like I was standing in for a cast of thousands. I'm very enthusiastic, but it's quite knackering to be all those people."
Last year, Vanessa claimed she had been out for 195 nights in a row since splitting from partner Ben Ofoedu in February 2023, as she looked for love again after he cheated on her. Speaking about being in relationships in the public eye, she said: "One of the horrible bits is this ghastly idea that people might be interested in you for the wrong reasons. But very nice people are probably not interested in you for that reason. They perceive it to be vulgar, showy, ostentatious. So you wonder if the only people who might want [you] are the horrible ones who are trying to use you in some way."
Vanessa is set to tell all about her relationship breakdown and her extraordinary life in her autobiography, Vanessa Bares All, which will be released on October 24.
She told podcast hosts Andi and Miquita Oliver: "It was really painful. Imagine writing about your wedding."
"Obviously you can't write about it with the misery of knowing that the whole thing crashed and burned, because that would be a really weird way of doing it. So you have to do it as you really felt on the day, and on the day I was supremely and sublimely happy. [The book] is a way to plough through all the bruising stuff you've pushed to one side and soar above."
