If Madonna wants to show her a**e and climb on an altar at 80, let her, says Vanessa Feltz
FROM raunchy bathtub pics to glamorous selfies, Vanessa Feltz has taken to Instagram like a duck to water.
And like fellow sexagenarian Madonna, the broadcaster has absolutely no desire to conform just because she’s in her seventh decade.
The popular 60-year-old presenter, who last month left Radio 2 to join TalkTV, has hit out at ageism and its “rampant misogyny”.
She says: “There’s this ghastly notion that you must stay in your lane — and if you’re old, you must stay in the old person lane.
“If you like wearing leather trousers, whose bloody business is it to say you can’t wear them? Who the hell is this #BeachBody-Ready person who decrees you have or haven’t got the right a**e to put in leather trousers or, in Madonna’s case, show it off?
“If you don’t want to look at it, don’t look at it. Just don’t be nasty. It’s incredibly censorious. There’s nothing ‘age inappropriate’. It is rampant misogyny and incredibly judgmental and pretty humourless. Madonna wrote a book which included dozens of pictures of her lady garden — she obviously enjoys doing it, so why should she stop?
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“It’s her job, that’s her. If she wants to take her clothes off, let her. She will be exactly the same at 80, I imagine — she’ll want to show off her ae and climb on to an altar and show off her rosaries.
“You don’t morph into someone else just because you get older.”
In January ex-Big Breakfast host Vanessa finally relented and joined Instagram alongside a wholesome video of her wrapped up on a UK beach.
Ten days later she upped the ante — and posted a photo of herself naked (bar a pair of sunglasses) in the tub, swigging from a glass of champagne to the strains of Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want To Have Fun.
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It exemplifies her sense of humour.
Vanessa — engaged to her 50-year-old “toyboy”, Phats & Small singer Ben Ofoedu — says: “You’re the same person you were when you were 14 or 24 or 42 or 53.
“You don’t suddenly become someone whose interests have completely changed, who wants to see completely different films at the cinema or someone who suddenly stops fancying people and wants a cup of hot cocoa instead.
“So if you love hip-hop, you love hip-hop. You don’t suddenly start listening to Vera Lynn singing We’ll Meet Again or The White Cliffs Of Dover.
“I particularly dislike those articles, the ‘Once you’re over the age of X don’t wear leather trousers, don’t have long hair, keep your bingo wings covered’. It’s so deeply insulting.”
When Vanessa presented her final radio show on BBC London, tributes poured in from various celebrities and politicians — including Boris Johnson — all praising her stellar 33-year broadcasting career.
It was, she smiles, “like attending my own funeral, with a huge commemorative wall with a billion photos of me and all these tributes about how marvellous I’d been. I was 60 in February — I don’t feel quite ready to be consigned to the grave just yet.”
While the DJ says she loved her time at the Beeb, she is excited to get stuck in at her new job.
Her TalkTV drivetime show, billed as a “one-woman crusade against the cost-of-living crisis”, will see her holding those in power to account.
‘I remember the terror we felt’
Just as Martin Lewis — a “close friend” — has almost single-handedly taken on Boris and Co, Vanessa hopes to do the same in her inimitable style.
She also recalls her struggles when married to her first husband, Michael Kurer, a then NHS junior doctor, as she was starting out in journalism.
Vanessa says the couple, who were both working overtime, took on second jobs and almost lost their house. Now she fears thousands of homeowners may lose theirs over the coming months.
She adds: “The cost-of-living crisis is so worrying and so, so deeply distressing for people. I want to start fighting the good fight. I will be waging war on behalf of people who are so beleaguered they don’t know where to turn.
“I will be taking on the politicians, the councillors, the fat-cats, the great and the good and all the people still thoroughly enjoying the profits and not losing any sleep at night about how to pay for their children’s shoes at school this week.
“When I was first married, it was to a junior doctor at hospital, and I think he was on £7,000 a year.
The cost-of-living crisis is so worrying and so, so deeply distressing for people. I want to start fighting the good fight.
Vanessa Feltz
“I was a freelance journalist with a ten-month-old baby — we were on the lowest income you could possibly be on.
“Then we had that awful interest hike to 14, 15 per cent. I remember the terror we felt. We had absolutely no way of making more money — we were both doing overtime and both doing other jobs.
“I was tutoring English and Latin — I’d have tutored in Cantonese, had I got the chance. We were left with about £70 a month once we’d paid the mortgage. We were so scared.
“I remember almost handing the keys back to our house, and people we knew went into negative equity and lost their homes. It was awful. I have never forgotten it. So I really, really, really know how it feels — it’s not like I’ve been rich all my life.”
Vanessa, who is planning a “joint 110th” birthday party with 50-year-old Ben in the autumn, insists she has no plans to walk down the aisle — despite the couple being engaged for 16 years. But they are blissfully happy.
Earlier this year Vanessa admitted the pair still enjoy an, erm, healthy love life, adding that they “do it wherever and whenever they want”.
She also recalled a lively anecdote involving a sex-trail of leeks and celery.
No, don’t ask.
Given we are conducting this interview in front of her young grandchildren, I’m mildly loath to probe for more sexual detail. “Oh, let’s just say we’ll shake it up with pumpkins in the autumn,” she cackles.
‘We don’t want to rock the boat’
“Maybe I’ll leave him a pumpkin Halloween trail — just don’t write that I’ll be the witch at the end of it!”
So while it’s fair to suggest the happy couple remain ensconced in the halcyon stages of lust, she insists they have no plans to marry — partly due to financial concerns “like everyone else”.
She explains: “Well, I married off two daughters recently and that was trying and expensive enough. But we’ve attended thousands of weddings together, and loads of them have already divorced.
“So, really, I think we are better off sticking as we are and not rocking the boat.”
In an age when most women in showbiz credit their mysteriously unmoving foreheads on three litres of oxygenated, mountain-spring water a day, Vanessa is quite open about her secret — Botox.
She’s also excited to no longer set a daily 3.30am alarm call for her Radio 2 early breakfast show which, she opines, will provide “the sort of deep, restorative sleep that means I will become so dazzlingly beautiful.
“People will think, ‘My God, is that Reese Witherspoon? Who is that stunning creature?’”
I’ve been having Botox since I was 37. I absolutely love it. I started having it when my husband left me, because I felt my lines were getting so deep.
She adds, cheerfully: “I’ve been having Botox since I was 37. I absolutely love it. I started having it when my husband left me, because I felt my lines were getting so deep.
“There was a froth of misery etched so deeply on to my forehead, I could see the lines reflected back at me from shop windows.
“I thought, ‘No way his behaviour was going to lie on my face’.”
Today, Vanessa is also quick to slam suggestions that she has lucked in with her present-day lover.
“I always say what a lucky thing Ben is to have me,” she deadpans.
“The great conversation he gets, what a glorious thing he gained upon, how lucky he is to look at me over the breakfast table of a morning.
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“I actually get a bit annoyed when people say, ‘Oh, well done you’ with Ben. Because, actually, how fortunate for him that he managed to land me, The Feltz.”
Quite.