Vanessa Feltz's 1 heartbreaking regret as she celebrates 25 years at the Express

To survive in the media industry for more than a few years is an achievement. To remain relevant, read and trusted is rarer still. But to do it at the same newspaper, week-in, week-out, for a quarter of a century? That is almost unheard of. Yet Vanessa Feltz has done exactly that.

Today marks 25 years since Vanessa first appeared as a columnist in the pages of the Daily Express. In that time, she has written more than 1,000 columns, charting love, loss, motherhood, heartbreak, politics, public life and private pain – all with a voice that is unmistakably hers. Warm, candid, funny, sometimes furious, often vulnerable, but always human. Unique.

As both her colleague and her friend, it was my privilege to sit down with Vanessa to talk about those 25 years, the ups and the downs, the mistakes she’s made along the way, the changing face of journalism, and what it has meant to be a woman with a voice – and an opinion – in an industry that hasn’t always welcomed either.

Don't miss Vanessa Feltz with JJ Anisiobi, only on the Daily Expresso podcast at 5PM today

I began with the most obvious question of all. “When you started, did you ever imagine you’d still be here 25 years later?” She laughs instantly, a big, knowing laugh, before answering.

“No. No. Who knew it could have lasted this long?” she says. “I mean, I’d been a newspaper columnist before, and I was poached by the then proprietor, Richard Desmond. It was a controversial appointment but I was wooed and beguiled by his charm and his chequebook. And what he hadn’t realised was that I was just about to go into the very first ever Celebrity Big Brother.”

That anecdote tells you a great deal about Vanessa Feltz. Opportunity, controversy, hard work, a complete refusal to stand still – and great timing! One of the things I’ve always admired about Vanessa is that she is, without question, the hardest worker in the room. For many, having their face and name splashed across a national newspaper every week would be reason enough to rest on their laurels. Not Vanessa. She’s always wanted more, and crucially, she has always been willing to do more.

In the early weeks of her Daily Express column, she was simultaneously hosting a BBC London radio show, preparing to enter the very first Celebrity Big Brother house, and still popping up on our TV screens.

Most people will remember her from her hugely successful eponymous chat show in the 1990s, her time on The Big Breakfast, and her near-constant presence across broadcast media. She didn’t just become a household name – she embedded herself there. But the newspaper column always mattered.

Even when she entered the Big Brother house, a cultural leap into the unknown at the time, she insisted on protecting it. “Part of my contract,” she told me, “was that I had to be allowed to write my column for the Express. Nobody knew how many people would watch this show – it was the first of its kind. It turned out to be somewhere between 15 and 20 million people! And the bit where I was writing my column inside the house was basically an advert for the Express. It was absolutely amazing.”

She smiles at the memory. “They made me write it on an ancient, decrepit manual typewriter, sitting in a room with all the other housemates.” It is pure Vanessa: turning chaos into copy. Our interview took place in Canary Wharf, central London, in the podcast studio used by our The Daily Expresso show.

Usually, it’s Vanessa, 63, who currently appears five days a week on Channel 5 as well as hosting Saturday and Sunday radio shows on LBC, doing the interviewing – asking the questions, drawing out emotion, leading the conversation. I won’t pretend it didn’t feel slightly surreal to be the one on the other side of the table.

I also became an Express columnist only a few months ago, so naturally I wanted to know how on earth she has managed to connect with readers so successfully, for so long. “It’s a question of why you want to write it,” she tells me. “What are you trying to do? Some columnists are deliberately malicious. They have a malevolent view of the world. They write something nasty and targeted at a particular individual.”

She pauses, carefully. “And then you have to ask yourself, ‘Why are you writing that?’ To fill a column with unpleasant observations about people you don’t know – or even people you do know – what’s the point of that? That’s never been my ambition.”

That philosophy explains a great deal about her longevity. Vanessa doesn’t write at readers; she writes with them. Over 25 years, she has taken them into her confidence. She has documented her highs and her lows. The births of her grandchildren. The breakdown of relationships. Moments of joy, grief, regret and resilience. Readers have laughed and cried alongside her – and they feel they know her. That connection is very real.

“I think that’s why people come up to me,” she smiles. “They’ve seen me on telly, doing shows with members of the public, quite close to them. They always think they can just come in and squash me under their armpits.”

She says it affectionately and with pride. Vanessa may glow in the limelight now, but it was never the life she planned. In fact, it wasn’t even the life she imagined for herself.

“I went to Cambridge,” she says, almost sheepishly. “I thought I was bright, academic. But the heat was on in the community I grew up in – the Jewish community – and the pinnacle of achievement was getting married. My parents thought Cambridge would make me more marriageable, more eligible. They didn’t really care what I did.”

So how did journalism happen?

“Only because my father said that if I couldn’t make a living immediately, I’d have to do law, which I didn’t want to do. I got married, which is what I was trained to do, bred to do. It sounds ridiculous now.”

That honesty, sometimes raw, sometimes uncomfortable, is what readers always recognised on the page. What advice would she give her younger self, I wonder? “I would have fought,” she sighs. “Fought hard against the pressure to get married so young. I would have tried to establish a feeling of being sufficient on my own. I would have made myself do more things alone, for longer, so I didn’t feel bereft if I wasn’t part of a couple.”

She pauses. “That’s a feeling that’s hard to get rid of.” Her early years in journalism were tough ones to be a woman. When I ask her if the industry then was prejudiced against women, her reply begins with another person’s story.

“It was [sexist and misogynistic] even back in the day with these ladies who had a huge audience right,” she continues. “But if you look at the sorts of things that men wrote about women in those days, if you look at, for example, the way that [reality star] Jade Goody was assassinated. Adult, middle class, wealthy men.

“Her life had been so horrifically traumatic. You know, she had cared for an addicted mother. She had really suffered as a child. Came on Big Brother, and she was meant to be fair game, equal to a pig. The way that she was written about and talked about, she got the worst of it, but I always got an enormous avalanche of criticism and personal abuse.”

She pauses. “I was definitely one of them. And as I say from my background, I hadn’t expected anything. I thought people would say, ‘well, she’s a nice person’. I didn’t think they’d start talking about my physical appearance and harpooning me in that way.”

Another pause. “So things have definitely changed. Things have definitely changed, and I do think for the better. The media is less racist and sexist now than when I started. ”

Over the years, Vanessa has skewered politicians, celebrated motherhood, revelled in grandmotherhood and dissected the absurdities of modern life. But one of her most important articles was also one of the hardest. She has spoken about her horrific encounter with serial abuser Rolf Harris during her time on The Big Breakfast. She describes him, without hesitation, as the worst person she has ever interviewed. At the time, she kept quiet about her experience.

“I didn’t go to my bosses,” she said quietly. “I didn’t make a complaint afterwards.” It wasn’t until 2014, nearly two decades later, that the past came crashing back.

“There was a knock at the door. It was the police. They had the tape. They said, ‘We believe you were assaulted by Rolf Harris live on television’. I said, ‘Gosh, I’ve never complained’. And they said there was now a case going to court.”

Despite the pain of reliving it, Vanessa agreed to speak publicly in the hope other victims would come forward. Once again, she put readers, and others, first. And in many ways, that sums up her 25 years at the Daily Express. Through her own trials and triumphs, she has always written with empathy, courage and generosity. Never pretending to be perfect. Never hiding from the truth.

In an industry that devours people and discards voices, Vanessa Feltz has endured – not by shouting the loudest, but by speaking honestly. After 25 years, more than a 1,000 columns, and countless lives touched along the way, her legacy is simple and profound. She made readers feel less alone. And that, in the end, is the greatest achievement of all.

Here’s to another 25 years of V and the Daily Express.