Vanessa Jane Feltz was born on 21st February 1962, she is an English television personality, broadcaster, and journalist. She has appeared on various television shows, including Vanessa (1994–1998), The Big Breakfast (1996–1998), The Vanessa Show (1999), Celebrity Big Brother (2001), The Wright Stuff (2003–2005), This Morning (2006–present), and Strictly Come Dancing (2013).
Feltz currently presents an early morning radio show on BBC Radio 2 and the Breakfast Show on BBC Radio London, both of which she will leave in summer 2022, and is a frequent panelist on The Talk on TalkTV. She also regularly sits in for Sara Cox and for Jeremy Vine on BBC Radio 2.
Vanessa Feltz was born in Islington, London, and grew up in Pine Grove, Totteridge. On her radio show, she frequently refers to Totteridge as “the Beverly Hills of North London” and her middle-class Jewish background as like “growing up in Fiddler on the Roof”. Her father, Norman, was in the lingerie business.
Feltz was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls, an independent school in Elstree, Hertfordshire. She then read English at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating with a first-class honors degree.
On 7 March 2011, Channel 5 moved The Vanessa Show to an afternoon slot at 14:15 following disappointing ratings for the morning slot. The move allowed Feltz to appear in live editions of her TV show after her morning radio commitments.
Ratings eventually improved and a second series of the show was planned to commence in September 2011, but it never went ahead. The Guardian’s “Media Monkey” blog dubbed Feltz “officially the hardest working woman in broadcasting” due to her weekday broadcasting commitments.
On 7 September 2013, she re-entered the Celebrity Big Brother house to take part in a task. She left the house the same day.
In July 2019, the BBC Annual Report recorded that Feltz was one of three women, along with Claudia Winkleman and Zoe Ball, amongst the ten highest paid BBC presenters, with a salary of £355,000.
