Vanessa Feltz says her love life 'nightmare' weeks after ex gets married

Vanessa Feltz has candidly admitted she's close to giving up on love as she labelled her dating life "devastating" and a "nightmare".

The TV star has been single since 2023, when she announced the end of her longterm relationship with Phats and Small singer Ben Ofoedu in a heartbreaking, tearful video. It was later revealed Ben, 53, had been unfaithful to Vanessa, 63. Ben has since moved and married 29 year old Vanessa Brown last month.

While former This Morning star Vanessa is still single, she knows how to put on a dazzling display at award ceremonies. She recently turned heads at the National Reality TV Awards in a gorgeous, eye-catching pink dress with gold embellishments before posing on the purple carpet.

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Her hair was styled in her signature stunning blonde barrel curls and her makeup was glowing. She oozed confidence as she made her way through to the ceremony, in which she and her team at her eponymous talkshow Vanessa, scooped a National Reality Television Award for Best Talk Show.

Whilst at the event, the star revealed in an exclusive chat that, although she’s looking as gorgeous as she always does, Vanessa’s still struggling to find a man. When asked how her dating life is going, she exclaimed: “Absolute nightmare, if you can think of anyone to fix me up with, please do. All names gratefully received and phone numbers! Shocking is how I'm finding it. Devastating.”

Vanessa then joked she is edging closer to swearing off dating for good, like her Loose Women star friend Linda Robson. Linda, who split from her husband Mark Dunsford in 2023 after 33 years of marriage, said earlier this year she is “past all that” when she was quizzed about dating and said she has “no interest” in finding love again.

And as we chat with Vanessa, she revealed she's tempted to follow the same path. “I'm edging towards becoming Linda Robson,” she lamented. “Every day I am getting closer to becoming Linda Robson who says [Impersonating Linda's London accent]: 'I don't need a man, I don't need nobody I'll be alright on my own, I've got my girlfriends, I've got my family...'

“And I reckon, you know, I can see why she's saying it now – I didn't used to be able to but I can now because it really is a bit miserable, on a terrible date you just think, 'Oh for God's sake'.” But, the TV star, who scooped a National Reality TV Award for Best Talk Show during the ceremony, is still holding on to hope. She said: “Anyway, one day don't you think so? One day there must be... Prince Charming must be out there for me somewhere - is he though?”

Vanessa then joked: “I might meet him tonight! Tonight I might meet him. There's one security guard I've got my eye on, I wouldn't say he had his own teeth necessarily but anyway!”

It's been two and a half years since Vanessa split from her ex-fiancé Ben Ofoedu after it was revealed the Phats and Small singer had cheated on her and Vanessa shared a heartbreaking, tearful video on social media to announce the end of their relationship. Ben has since moved on and married Vanessa Brown earlier this month – but he has still been taking subtle swipes at his TV star ex, even on his wedding day.

Speaking about his failed engagement as he tied the knot with his 29-year-old wife, Ben said: “Never again will I do that. I wasted 17 years of my life. I don't believe in long engagements any more. You don't want to get married if there's a question mark over your engagement.” Although Vanessa is yet to find love herself, the TV presenter has lots of positive things to keep her busy, after launching her Channel 5 talk show in March this year.

The programme is clearly a passion project of Vanessa's as she lit up talking about all it's achieved already. “It's only been going four months we're absolutely delighted,“ she told us. “We can't believe it. What us, Graham Norton, Jonathan Ross – we're like yeah why not! We can talk too, they can talk why shouldn't we?“

However, there has been some controversy surrounding the programme as it was hit with over 1,856 OfCom complaints over harmful comments Karen Millen made on the programme about breastfeeding in June. During a chat about breastfeeding and if it was OK to breastfeed a three-year-old after a video of a woman doing so went viral, Karen remarked: “There's no benefit, is there? For a child to be breastfed beyond six months, really. I think it's quite a selfish thing on the mother's part.“

Karen's comments sparked online anger and the former fashion designer later issued an apology via Vanessa, but that didn't stop people reaching out to Ofcom. However, Vanessa has been on television for more that 33 years and seemed unfazed about the OfCom complaints and viewer anger when asked. She explained, taking a subtle swipe at former TV show's she had worked on: “The situation is this; it's a live show. And unlike some other live shows, it's totally unscripted. There are live shows on TV, I've certainly been a guest on many of them, where they rehearse what you're going to say in advance, you're basically given an anecdote to tell, you tell it and that's it.

“So it is live, they are live but it's a kind of rehearsed live which is not quite real or natural because you're kind of being scripted – although it's live.“

Revealing how her show differs, Vanessa said: “Well our show is nothing like that it's properly, genuinely live. So people will say whatever they're going to say. Now if that's something that's going to upset people, to me that's a shame because I think it's an entertaining, lighthearted, gentle programme that I think people enjoy at lunchtime – I'm not trying to upset anybody but if we have a guest who thinks something or says something we're not controlling them because it's a spontaneous live show so that's the kind of thing that can happen and it did happen.“

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