Vanessa Feltz on recovering from heartbreak and how life’s speeding up in her 60s
The TV presenter on feeling ‘a bit better’ after splitting with her fiance, and how bombing around on a motorbike helps keep life fun
It’s been a tough year for Vanessa Feltz. But although “shattered” after the break-up of her 16-year engagement, she’s coping by keeping incredibly busy.
When she’s not presenting TalkTV or This Morning, spending plenty of time with her four young grandchildren helps take the 61-year-old’s mind off her painful split with singer Ben Ofoedu earlier this year. And she’s also managing to squeeze in filming a series of Celebs Go Dating – which she’s taking part in, rather than presenting.
“I’ve had a broken relationship, and it was only in the middle of January,” she says. “So it’s been a bit of a leap, really, but I’m doing my best – I’m trying to be happy. Every month that goes by I feel a bit more used to it and a bit less shocked and a bit better.”
Part of the reason she’s cramming so much into her new single life is because her mum, Valerie, died of cancer at the age of 57, and Feltz is acutely aware of how precious – and short – life is. So she wants to make sure she spends as much time as possible with her grandchildren – Zeke, aged nine, Neroli, seven, AJ, four, and Cecily, 10 months.
“It’s absolutely the best thing on earth being a grandmother – there’s nothing like it. It’s an absolute pleasure and privilege,” she declares.
“My mum died at the age of 57 and I’m now 61, so every single day that I’m around to be with my grandchildren and experience them is absolute bliss for me, and a complete privilege because I’m so aware of life being short and time going fast. I already knew that, so it’s an absolute joy for me and I love them with all my heart.”
Feltz is adamant that despite being a 61-year-old granny, she’s definitely not slowing down. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“You could say I’m working harder than I’ve ever worked in my life. Slowing down? Definitely not!” she says with a laugh. “No, I’m speeding up.”
And she’s not just on the work fast-track either – Feltz is also doing plenty of socialising. And to illustrate the point, she explains how she “goes everywhere” on the back of a motorbike – not driving it herself, but as a passenger on a limo bike. “You hop on the bike and the driver delivers you wherever you want go,” she says. “I’m always bombing off on this motorbike, and last week I went to Rupert Murdoch’s enormous party – Rishi Sunak was there and Suella Braverman, and Keir Starmer, and I arrived and all the security guards said it was the best arrival of the night because I bombed up, leapt off and took off my helmet and jacket.
“I do that all the time – sometimes three or four nights a week, to different premieres or parties, or whatever.”
But despite living life in the fast lane, the glamorous granny is keen to stress that it’s important both she and others take time for regular breaks, and she’s teamed up with the plant-based food brand Gosh! to encourage workers to take a break and love lunchtimes again, after Gosh! research found a third of workers never venture outside their home or workplace during their working day, and 58% completely skip their lunchtime meal at least once a week.
Vanessa has partnered with plant-based food brand Gosh! to encourage people to take a lunch break
“It’s all about having a healthy lunch break, because academic studies show it’s really good for you mentally and physically to have about 15 minutes a day minimum,” explains Feltz, who dressed up as a ‘Lunchtime Crier’ to get the healthy lunchtime message across.
She insists that despite her “gruelling” filming schedule, she always finds time for a breather outside herself, explaining: “I really do try and take a break – I find one of my greatest solaces on earth is gardening, which I really love. So I do try and spend some time in the garden every day and get outside if I possibly can.
“Take a break, go outside, and eat some food – if you do, it will enormously enhance your energy levels and creativity and wake you up and put you in a better mood. I need all those things when I do TV five days a week.“
Feltz’s work schedule is so demanding it’s hard to see how she squeezes in any breaks at all – especially as she’s now got Celebs Go Dating to add to her TV commitments. But the Channel 4 show, on which matchmakers pair single celebrities with non-celebrity partners in a bid to find true love, is fun, not work, she cheerily insists.
“I love it, it’s a right laugh,” she explains. “It’s very, very fun, it’s full of adventure, and you really don’t know who you’re going to meet or who they’re going to put you with – you don’t know why they choose whoever they choose. Some of the choices are like ‘Oh my God, you really think I’m going to get on with that person?’”.
She says the show is definitely “a learning curve, and quite an interesting one”, and adds: “I’m very, very pleased indeed that I signed up for it. It was an unlikely thing for me to do and I think even the people at the programme were amazed I agreed to do it. They didn’t think for a minute that I’d go there. But I did.”
The show airs in mid-August – and perhaps its only downside, Feltz observes, is that she’ll be filming it so much over the summer that she won’t be able to get away as much as she’d like to her second home on the Atlantic ocean in East Cork, Ireland, to meet up with her family, and in particular, her grandchildren.
She says: “We all spend a great deal of time there – we love it more than anywhere else on earth. We spend Christmas there, and we spend the summers there if any of us can get away. And one thing I love about it is that we actually live together, so it’s not visiting them, it’s actually living with them.
“But this year I’m doing Celebs Go Dating until mid-August, so I won’t be able to get away much, so I’m going for a few weekends to see my beloved East Cork and my beloved grandchildren – a great combination. I’m there for all the bath times and breakfasts and whatever arguments go on during the day, and it’s just the proper way of really sharing life with them, which I absolutely love.
“That house is one of the few really good things I’ve ever done in life. I’ve made lots and lots of mistakes, but that beautiful house in Ireland isn’t one of them.”
Vanessa Feltz is working with plant-based food brand Gosh! encouraging Brits to love their lunchtimes again with its healthy and nutritious food range.
The Press Association
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