Vanessa Feltz says her single status makes her feel ‘positively leprous’
Presenter said her feelings about needing to be married are ‘overwhelming’
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Vanessa Feltz has spoken about how being single and surrounded by married people can make her feel “positively leprous”.
The 62-year-old TV personality and Loose Woman panellist, who split from her long-term partner Ben Ofoedu in 2023, discussed the pressure her parents placed on her to get married when she was young – and how she feels an overwhelming need to find a partner today.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Feltz said that she continually feels the need to be married, and those feelings are “acute and overwhelming”.
“In my head I know it’s absolutely and utterly absurd. As a single person, I don’t think I should be demoted and have to lick food from a bowl under the table because I’m unwanted and unchosen and unclaimed, and I would violently defend anyone else who was forced to feel less so because they aren’t married,” she said.
“I am ebullient, full of oomph, funny and good fun, outgoing, gregarious, razzle-dazzle, entertaining…plus I am clever. But in my heart and soul, I feel positively leprous. It’s really sad, isn’t it?”
Reflecting on her upbringing, Feltz said that the prospect of marriage was all her parents discussed at home.
“But more important than anything: my parents wanted me to get married. It was all that was discussed at home,” she said. “The whole getting married thing was openly, crushingly, overwhelmingly important. I’m not exaggerating.”
“It was like Fiddler On The Roof, it felt as if I was growing up in Anatevka, even though Anatevka is a fictional village, and the play is 100 years old.”
Early in 2023, Feltz announced her split from her partner of 16 years, the Phats & Small singer Ben Ofoedu, after she learnt he had cheated on her.
At the time, Ofoedu admitted to breaking Feltz’s trust when he had sex with another woman who he met while on tour with Phats & Small.
Feltz, an agony aunt, said she had been forced to “take her own advice” by deciding to end the relationship after hearing that Ofoedu had cheated via messages she received on Christmas day.
She said at the time: “I feel incredibly sad, disappointed and shocked and all of those horrible things. I feel terribly humiliated, but also full of resolve.”
Prior to her relationship with Ofoedu, Feltz was married to orthopaedic surgeon Michael Kurer with whom she has two daughters, Saskia and Allegra, who are both in their thirties. Feltz married Kurer in 1983 and they divorced in 2000.
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