I’m utterly adored by lesbians,” beams Vanessa Feltz. It is the first in a number of breathless tales from the daytime TV and radio stalwart. “Once I got to introduce the Weather Girls singing ‘It’s Raining Men’ at the gay and lesbian something-or-other in Finsbury Park and I was driven through the lesbian crowd in a sort of lesbo-mobile being inundated with offers of all kinds of sexual gratification and it was absolutely excellent and I genuinely don’t think I’ve enjoyed anything quite as much in my entire life.”
Feltz doesn’t believe in the pause or the whisper. The full stop either, frankly. We’re meeting in a restaurant near her home in St John’s Wood, for an interview that was nearly derailed by an emergency trip to the hospital. Feltz had kidney stones and now, just a few days post-surgery, she admits to not feeling her best. But Vanessa Feltz operating at a solid four or five is still akin to a mere mortal operating at a nine. Dressed in a flowery pink dress and mismatched gold earrings, she is alert, enthusiastic and as camp as a row of tents. Of course she showed up for her interview. Feltz is potentially the busiest woman in show business, after all. There’s her LBC radio show every Saturday and the near-daily cycle of being a professional talker on This Morning and Jeremy Vine on 5. She’s a fixture at London’s book launches, charity dinners and film premieres, too. Illness forced her to stay home two nights in a row this week. “It’s not like me at all, I couldn’t bear it.”
