Neurotic salad-dodger Vanessa Feltz has been a blight on the screens of British TV for decades. A celeb in the classic classic rentaquote mode, Feltz is (and has been) perfect Brass Eye fodder.

Vanessa made her name as the host of a series of lowbrow, low quality daytime TV programs, including her imaginatively-titled sub-springer chatshow snore-fest "Vanessa". Vanessa was legendary amongst production staff for her bad temper and her scowlingly self-important attitude towards her colleagues at the height of her career. At her peak, Feltz was literally a cash cow for Anglia Television, and "Vanessa" dominated the daytime ratings.

In 1998, however, her incessant demands for more money finally got the better of Anglia Television, and they sacked her in favour of the current queen of daytime chat, Trisha. Feltz immediately made a huge fuss and flounced off to the BBC, where she was humiliated by Trisha in the ratings. Within the year, her show had been axed, and she was out to pasture, with no show, no ratings and a reputation for being difficult.

After three years in the boondocks of fame, Vanessa finally garnered some (unsympathetic tabloid) publicity when her husband left her, and she lost a load of weight. Nonetheless, her star was inevitably on the wane at this point, and she remains one of those ex-celebrities that is clinging with clawlike hands to the fringes of fame. Poetic justice perhaps for an evil-tempered bint who regularly threatened to make sure that junior researchers never worked in TV again.

Keywords:

lard / neuroses / celebrity big brother / loopy / huff / tabloid / split-up / weight fluctuation / murdered