Vanessa Feltz opens up about DISASTROUS dates and lifts lid on new ‘Big Breakfast’ style show after emotional TV axe

VANESSA FELTZ said an emotional goodbye to her self-titled Channel 5 talk show on Friday – but she will soon be back on screen with a brand new YouTube programme. In a career move that rivals Holly Willoughby’s, the veteran presenter, 64, is turning to the internet to air At Home With Vanessa, which she will film at her North London pad. Vanessa Feltz, in her boudoir, is turning to the internet to air At Home With Vanessa Credit: Stewart Williams Vanessa renovating her home for her latest career move Credit: Stewart Williams She is already creating a TV studio at the house, where celebrity guests will be invited to climb into Vanessa’s pink superking-sized bed for a chat. And as I sit down with the star — who found fame on ITV in 1994 with her self-titled first talk show — builders are busy installing lighting and sets ready for the venture, which launches next month. Not only is she back on the bed, she’s back on the dating scene and is opening up about her dating disasters for the first time. Even though Vanessa is excited about the future, she is clearly still hurt about her Channel 5 sacking after only a year on air. She was called into a meeting with TV bosses last month to be told her daytime show was getting the chop to make way for an afternoon movie. Instead of wallowing in self-pity or taking a well-earned rest, workaholic Vanessa began planning a new show format. It comes as Holly prepares to make a big comeback with a YouTube magazine show Together following more than a year out of the spotlight — which will rival her former show This Morning. Of her Channel 5 axing, Vanessa tells me: “I didn’t cry when they told me. I just got very quiet. “I was absolutely devastated and completely gutted and very shocked and very disappointed. It was totally crushing. “Every time something awful happens, and boy does it happen, either you fold up, curl up and disappear, or you try and come back fighting.” And fighting she certainly is, ploughing thousands of pounds into turning her Victorian gothic folly into a giant TV studio. Vanessa reveals her new show will have echoes of On The Bed, her segment on Nineties Channel 4 hit The Big Breakfast, in which she interviewed stars including Charlton Heston, Jim Carrey, Andie MacDowell and Goldie Hawn in a bed. Now she has ambitions to resurrect the segment for YouTube — but this time, she will host it from her very own boudoir. Recalling how she sprang into action after learning her C5 show was being dropped, she said: “I was told on the Wednesday and, by Friday, I had the builders in. “I couldn’t think what to do. And then I thought, ‘YouTube’. “That’s what Piers Morgan’s doing with colossal success. Holly Willoughby is about to do it, too” Piers, who has 4.4million subscribers on the platform, has even given Vanessa his backing, telling her to go for it at a recent summer party. She said the venture is “not cheap”, but added: “I’m not a natural entrepreneur. I’ve never wanted to risk it. I’ve never dared to. But I am backing myself.” Launching a new show at a swanky TV studio is one thing, but opening her home up to prying eyes is something else. However, Vanessa is unperturbed, telling me: “I feel like I’ve made my entire career out of other people’s lives. Callers and listeners and viewers and guests telling me about their own lives and everything else. Vanessa with movie star Eddie Murphy Credit: Channel 4 Vanessa chatting to the Spice Girls Credit: Channel 4 “I think it’s a bit hypocritical and s****y if I don’t let them in to mine. I think everybody already knows far too much about me. “I don’t think there’s going to be any revelation just by looking at my curtains or my wallpaper or whatever. I hope it will feel real, because it is.” Vanessa tells me I am the first visitor to her bedroom for a long time. The star left her fiancé, ex Ben Ofoedu, in 2023 after nearly 17 years together when she discovered he was cheating on her. Having found love and marriage with a new woman, the Phats & Smalls singer, who is a decade younger than Vanessa, has continually criticised his ex and has plans for a tell-all memoir. Vanessa is reluctant to talk about him, but the emotional toll is clear. “I’m trying not to ever mention him or talk about him at all, you see,” she says. “But the truth is, a woman that he was sing on the side trolled my daughter on Christmas Day. So therefore my girl knew. I couldn’t hide it and pretend it wasn’t happening. Vanessa interviewing singer Leo Sayer on Channel 4’s Big Breakfast in 1997 Credit: Ken McKay Vanessa said: ‘Every time something awful happens, and boy does it happen, either you fold up, curl up and disappear, or you try and come back fighting’ Credit: Stewart Williams “So I ended it. When I did so, the previous incumbent gave a volley of interviews saying how enormously happy he’d been, how he’d ruined his own life, how he would do anything to get back with me etc. “But since then, unfortunately, his stream of increasingly unpleasant revelations about me keep appearing. I’m imagining the intention is to rattle and haunt me or possibly to seek to destroy any reputation I’ve built up, which is, to me, absolutely extraordinary. “Because what actually happened was I ended it and that person was desperate to come back. “Also, I believe that person is meant to be happily married. Piers, who has 4.4million subscribers on YouTube, has given Vanessa his backing, telling her to go for it at a recent summer party Credit: Getty Vanessa said: ‘Holly Willoughby is about to do it, too’ Credit: Getty “So by all means focus on being married and have a lovely life and live happily ever after. “But why would you say horrible things about someone that you were with for 16-and-a-half years?” Vanessa, who is also a weekend LBC radio host, has tentatively thrown herself back into dating after almost two decades. But she has not been tempted to join any dating apps, terrified that suitors may spill the beans about their encounters. She says: “Imagine that you walk into Wetherspoons and it’s me. You know, you’re going to text every one of your mates. “I’ve got four grandchildren. I’ve got to maintain some level of dignity. So I don’t really want my sexcapades to end up in the papers. So, no. I’m not apping.” Instead, she has let friends and colleagues introduce her to potential partners — on one condition. “They have to be men of a certain age,” she insists. “I’ve dabbled with a younger model before and that worked out quite disastrously.” But Vanessa admits her new strategy has its downsides. “We go for a suitable age, suitable consort, but they don’t seem to have an ounce of game or banter or humour or flirtation,” she says. “I think they think it’s a big achievement to be still alive.” Attempting to put a positive spin on her dating disasters, I point out that at least her romantic interests are picking up the bill. “I thought that I would love that, but it is not worth it,” she replies. “I thought it would be a very big change to have a man pay for me. A very big change. So I thought it would be fabulous, but it’s not. “Luckily, I can afford my own dinner. I don’t need anyone, thank God, to buy me dinner. And if I did, I’d rather stay at home and have a cheese sandwich than sell myself for a dinner.”The presenter says some of her recent encounters have been “shocking”. “They look like they’re going to crumble like a really stale Jacob’s cream cracker,” she reveals. “It was not that long ago, the gentleman concerned was driving me from here to the restaurant, which is about a mile and a half, and took about six minutes. “In that period of time, when I’d only just met him, he told me all about his hellish divorce, his mother dying, the operation he’d just had, his doctor. You just think, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, where’s the bit where I get to flutter my eyelashes at you?’. They’re certainly not, so far, the gentleman of my dreams — more nightmares, I’d say. But I have not, as ever, given up hope.” Vanessa is oozing confidence after shedding 7st following a gastric bypass op in 2019. The star dropped from a size 22 to a size 10, but confesses she has considered weight-loss injections. She says: “If I could use the fat jabs, believe me, I would. I’d have them in a heartbeat because I believe it takes away the food noise. “And the food noise is torture. I’m always thinking, ‘Shall I have a Cornetto, shan’t I have a Cornetto?’. And that’s even with a gastric band. I’ve got a bypass, but I’m always thinking, ‘I shouldn’t have that. Why did I eat that? Why?’. “It’s that horrible monologue in your head where you can never, ever forgive yourself. You’re always wondering why. So anything that gets rid of that — how great.” But she adds of the jabs: “I’ve been told I shouldn’t have them because I’ve had a gastric bypass. I don’t want to do something stupid and behave like a bloody idiot. So I’m not doing that. But am I in favour of them? Yes. Do I think every celeb who’s ever used them owes the world an explanation? No. “But I think these days, when you look at someone who was much bigger and now looks a lot smaller, you can’t help thinking they’re probably on the jabs, can you?” For a woman who has spent her three-decade career at the BBC, ITV, plus Channels 4 and 5, Vanessa is excited to see what her viewers will make of her new digital offering. “I hope people like it,” she says. “But in the end, it’s only TV. If they don’t, I’ll think of something else.”