Vanessa's new lease of life

Vanessa Feltz swooshes in to the BBC Radio offices in London five minutes late. She seems terribly worried. "I'm very sorry," she says looking rather flustered. "It's unforgivable." I tell her it's fine but she seems genuinely upset. "Well, it's unprofessional isn't it?" she says. "I'm always on time. Everyone you meet will tell you this. They'll say, 'Vanessa's always on time.'" By the end of the interview she's apologised three times more, which is all rather odd because the rest of the time she's pretty upfront and together.

She certainly has a pretty impressive physical presence. It's not just that she's large and loud and very clever, she's also completely distinctive.

Everyone recognises her. I watched her rush down the street to the radio studio and people stopped and stared.

"They always do that," she says. "Normally people shout things out to me. 'You look great, V,' 'Love the show, V,' that type of thing. Sometimes they say, 'Don't eat that ice cream, V, you're on a diet!' She looks a bit crestfallen when she says that.

Vanessa Feltz has become, rather unfairly, famous for her fluctuating weight. Over the past four years she has gone from a size 26 to a 12, though she looks a couple of sizes bigger than that at present. Does she feel better now that she is slimmer than she was?

"I always said I didn't give a toss about my weight. I still don't although I'm glad you think I'm slimmer," she says. "The papers have been full of pictures of me cycling with my bottom hanging over the seat saying I've put all the weight back on. It's very hurtful. I think I've always been stereotyped by that - as a fat, greedy, Jewess with opinions. That hurts. It really does. But being thin doesn't make you happy. I am actually bored of the whole weight thing. I have a brain. So what about my body. I only keep fit because of Dennis. How embarrassing for a fitness trainer to have an overweight partner!"

The Dennis she is referring to is Dennis Duhaney, her personal fitness trainer and well, what? "Ah," she says coquettishly, "let's just say we're having a nice time."

Duhaney was called in to the Feltz household when Michael Kurer, Feltz's former husband, told his wife she had three months to shape up or else he was leaving her. After seven weeks he left anyway and went off with 26-year-old doctor, Rachel Evans, but Feltz kept on working out seven days a week with Duhaney and eventually they got together. "He is a marvellous man," she says. "He is a lot of fun and we have a great time together. In fact he called me this morning and asked me what I was going to tell you about our relationship. He said I should tell you we're having a good time, so that's what I'm going to say."

How intriguing, I say to her. I had read that they had parted. "Parted?" she says, "Parted! We've been living together for the past four months!"

Why the intrigue then? "Oh, maybe because it's fun," she says. "I have so much fun with Dennis. He's so different to my ex-husband."

Vanessa Feltz is also, again rather unfairly, famous for the acrimonious nature of the break-up with her ex, a surgeon. She may have mad, blonde extended hair and wear faux strapless leopardskin figure-hugging dresses, high, high heels, ankle chains and make-up, yet hiding beneath all that is a very wounded, sometimes not very confident person.

She continually asks me if she looks okay (she does) and is her hair all right (yes, in a messy mermaid type way) and maybe she shouldn't have worn the red, false long nails. As she stands and poses defensively, with a hand placed protectively on her stomach, she tells me lots and lots about her new radio show for BBC London 94.9.

For instance, it has a high sexual content - because the listeners expect it of her. "But I'm not vulgar," says 40-year-old Feltz, tossing back those locks. "I talk about sex because I like sex and I think it's fun and great, and I don't see what's the problem." It's not the first time she's worked on radio. "I presented Jewish London on GLR. I got all my family to come in and do jingles - my mum, my dad, my husband. But that was before ... well, before everything happened.

The "before" refers to three things: before her husband left her in 1999 after 16 years of marriage; before her mother Valerie died of cancer a few years earlier, and before her eponymous chat show was axed by the BBC. "Three things," she says, "and they all happened at roughly the same time. Why is that? One I could have dealt with on it's own. Even after Michael left and I felt so utterly and horribly devastated I still managed to laugh. I remember the day after, I told the girls (she has two daughters with Kurer) 'Well it's terrible and awful and it will be a rough ride, but we'll all still laugh and have fun.' I like having fun. I'd really loved life up until then."

She has, in the past, talked a lot about her marriage break-up (the divorce was finalised three years ago). "I became very depressed," she says.

She comes from a high-achieving family. Her mother didn't go to work but was "very Jane Austen. We may have lived in Totteridge," says Feltz, "but my mother sort of tilled the land. She had an amazing herbaceous border and she stitched samplers and things. She was very intelligent and unpredictable. I always knew she expected me to do well and so it didn't occur to me to do anything but that." Feltz is obviously also very intelligent. She went to Cambridge University and peppers her conversation with references to English literature. She talks about poetry a lot. She says things like, "Before my husband left me I used to lie on the sofa with a box of chocolates and a poetry book."

Five months after her mother's death, her father, Norman, remarried. "We had a falling out over it," says Feltz, "and then I realised I needed him and that he needed to be married and now it's all fine."

She and Dennis have a lovely life going to gigs, the theatre, clubs and the like. Also, like her mother, she's got very into gardening. "I've grown marvellous lilies," she says. "When Dennis comes home I make him gaze at them. I think he likes that."

Her own daughters, Allegra, 17, and Saskia, 14, are very different to Feltz. "Even though we live only three miles away from where I grew up [Hampstead Garden Suburb] they are quite happy just chillin', as they call it."

It has taken Vanessa Feltz a long time to learn to chill. Her utter horror at what happened to her is still present. "I felt as if I had never known my husband," she says. "I questioned everything. Did he still love me? Had he ever loved me? What on earth my life had been based on?"

But now, four years on, she says she feels a better person. "I can now really understand the pain and anguish people go through. I could never understand that before. When you get to a place where all your reassurances have been taken away, where the person you thought you knew so well has turned out to be someone completely different, what do you do?

"I had spent 16 years being the best wife and mother I could. I did everything that was expected of me and I enjoyed doing it. I thought we were rock solid. If you can't trust that, what do you trust?"

Maybe yourself ? I suggest. "Exactly!"she says. "That is what I have had to learn to do."

Vanessa Feltz is on BBC London 94.9FM every weekday from 3pm-5pm and on Saturday mornings from 9am-noon.