Vanessa Feltz's guilt over sad divorce - 'I should've shielded my children'

Daily Mirror

13 hours ago

As Vanessa Feltz and daughter Saskia Joss launch their podcast on helping children with anxiety, the former This Morning star reflects on her traumatic divorce from Michael Kurer
There's little we haven't seen Vanessa Feltz tackle in more than 35 years as one of Britain's best-known TV personalities, from her high-profile divorce from surgeon Michael Kurer, the father of her two daughters, to her mental health crisis in the Celebrity Big Brother house and her split from Ben Ofoedu in January 2023 after 16 years together. But her ability to pick herself up and brush herself off has rarely been in doubt.
Now 63, the star is showing us another side of herself as she takes on a new role as podcast co-host with her youngest daughter Saskia Joss, 35, who's a child therapist and author of Help! My Child's Anxiety Is Giving Me Anxiety. In this exclusive chat with OK!, Vanessa and Saskia discuss finding common ground on the podcast and some of the family's toughest moments over the last three decades.
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What's it like working together for the first time?
Vanessa: Fantastic, and unexpected. Neither she nor I ever dreamed in a million years we'd work together. We're in completely unrelated fields. Saskia qualified as a primary school teacher, then a children's therapist. So this is a bonus.
Saskia: I agree. I refer to mum on most things because she's extremely capable – a successful business person, stylish, good at home design, everything. There are few things I wouldn't ask her opinion about, so it's surprising to have this role reversal, where she's asking me what I think.
What have you learnt so far from Saskia?
Vanessa: Well, 500 children a day in this country are referred to mental health services with anxiety. There seems to be such an epidemic, and with Saskia's experience this felt like the right thing to do. She's already had so many people reach out since the podcast started, wanting help, floundering with their child's chronic anxiety. Children with anxiety give parents anxiety. It's a big thing.
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Saskia, your mum shares experiences of her own childhood as well as parenting you and Allegra, 37. Has it been enlightening?
Saskia: It's interesting to hear how certain things have impacted her career and her anxieties. She's been very willing to assess her own mistakes in a way that most don't want to, and certainly not publicly. I get to be the expert but she brings this vulnerable, quite rare quality of being happy to critique herself.
Vanessa, you became a single parent when the girls were very young. Did that change anything?
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Vanessa: It united us. I did as good a job as I could. I just wanted them to know they were safe – that if there were things I couldn't do, like change a tyre or work the burglar alarm, I'd find someone who would show me. I grasped the idea that they could feel vulnerable or worried. It was up to me to make sure they didn't.
Saskia: We are a very tight unit. When bad things were happening, we just got closer. We're a triumfeminate of women! If we have the chance, we'll hang out. We really get on and love each other.
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Vanessa, we don't imagine you were a strict mum?
Vanessa: I wasn't big on saying no. I didn't punish them, I was very laissez-faire. Do I regret it? Not really. They've grown up to be lovely people, lovely parents.
Is there anything you regret?
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Vanessa: When I got divorced after their father left me, I think I was too open with them about information and how I was feeling. I probably should have shielded them from that more than I did.
Do you agree with that, Saskia?
Saskia: Did she talk about it a lot? Yes. But more so because she was famous and people were intrigued. Even on the days she didn't want to talk about it, she'd have to. Someone at the supermarket would say, 'Oh Vanessa, what's happened?'
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It can't always have been easy growing up with a famous mum…
Saskia: We've all had a lot of therapy! I think the big thing about a famous parent is a lot of what you do isn't anonymous. That's weird in your teenage years, when you just want to fit in. Luckily, people were always very nice about it.
Vanessa: The public side isn't always nice but there were lots of benefits, not least I could pay the bills. We also got to go to film premieres and parties. They got to meet the Spice Girls.
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Has much changed since you were bringing up Saskia and Allegra?
Vanessa: I remember when I was about five, there was a boy clearly unable to go into school. I remember him clinging to the door of a car and biting the headmaster on the leg. He wasn't being naughty, he was terrified. It turned out after extensive therapy – which nobody really had in the sixties – that both his grandparents died while he was in school, so he was scared his family would die if he went. Anxiety existed, it just wasn't spoken about in the same way.
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We assume even more has changed since you were growing up?
Vanessa: I was raised in a different era. I don't think anyone cared what you thought or felt. You were just told to get on with it. One summer I was invited by a friend to stay with her and her parents in their holiday home in Frinton-on-Sea. I was terribly excited and my mother drove me there. That night I had separation anxiety, I missed my family. I started to cry and couldn't stop. I was delivered back home the following day by the father, by train.
How did that go down at home?
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Vanessa: My parents punished me for the entire summer. They said, 'There's nothing organised for you to do, you're not supposed to be here.' I was only meant to be in Frinton for a week, but it felt as if the punishment lasted months, of me being told, 'You're a failure because you failed to enjoy this wonderful thing.' That's pretty harsh parenting, isn't it?
Saskia: It was very different for us. Mum always said that if something isn't nice, just come home. I did a summer camp in America and I wasn't enjoying the atmosphere. She called and said, 'If you don't like it, come home. We'll find you nice things to do.'
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Your kids are lucky to have Vanessa as a grandma, too...
Saskia: She's the GOAT [greatest of all time] of grandmas. Our fairy grandmother. She teaches all the rudest songs, the cheekiest things she remembers from her school days, brings all the chocolates and films that are probably a bit too old for them. They all adore her.
Vanessa: I do love everything about being a grandma. I love hanging out with them, it's a win-win for me.
Saskia: She literally carries around a handbag every day with their faces on the side, and has done for 10 years. We get her a new one every Christmas, updated with a new photo of the children. She carries her grandchildren with her, literally, figuratively, emotionally and in fabric form.
* Help! My Child's Anxious is available on Global Player and all major podcast platforms.