Vanessa Feltz

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist I don't care who knows it, I love Melanie Sykes. That woman has done more to keep my pecker up than Netflix, Mother Nature and my other half put together. At the age of 50 - and it can't hurt that she's a breathtaking beauty who looks not a day older than 35 - Mel has simply wafted off to Venice and been swept off her feet by a snog-worthy gondolier.

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist Did anyone else take immense comfort from the story about Her Majesty the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh being bored witless at Balmoral? I wouldn't normally wish a single second of tedium upon the monarch but somehow the phrase "they were sitting around twiddling their thumbs" applied to a 94 and 99-year-old tickled me delightfully.

express.co.uk — First-time mum Carrie Symonds is having a fab holiday at the £600-a-night Grand Hotel Tremezzo on the shores of Lake Como. PUBLISHED: 01:46, Wed, Sep 30, 2020 | UPDATED: 01:46, Wed, Sep 30, 2020 Link copied Leave Carrie alone (Image: Getty) Sign up for FREE now and never miss the top politics stories again. We will use your email address only for sending you newsletters. Please see our Privacy Notice for details of your data protection rights. She has baby Wilfred strapped to her front.

express.co.uk — Claudia Winkleman is smart, hilarious, self-deprecating - and I can't wait to get my hands on her new book, Quite. I must, however, take gentle issue with one of her pronouncements. PUBLISHED: 00:01, Tue, Sep 22, 2020 | UPDATED: 15:11, Tue, Sep 22, 2020 Link copied Claudia wants women to show off their shouders (Image: Getty) Sign up for FREE now and never miss the top politics stories again. We will use your email address only for sending you newsletters.

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist Enough already! The time has come to fling wide the windows, utilise all existing expertise on preventing cross-infection, unlock doors and allow families to visit their beloved relatives in care homes. As one lady pining for a sight of the adored and confused mother she hasn't glimpsed since March told me: "We are not visitors.

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist Do you admit to a pang of envy at the thought of Brad Pitt's stunning new girlfriend's "open marriage"? Does a tiny part of you think how liberating it must be to have the security of a ring upon your finger and simultaneous carte blanche to cavort carnally with anyone who takes your fancy?

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist If you're expecting me to add my clamour to the crabby chorus telling teenagers to suck up the disappointment of their lowered A-level results and "use the experience to become stronger', forget it. I'm all for backbone and resilience. "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade" is a reasonable philosophy. Crying over spilt milk won't clean the floor or moisten your cereal.

express.co.uk — The lack of au pairs is a national disaster (stock image) (Image: Getty)Lord, what will Britain's beleaguered working families do without their help? My au pair memories include one who smuggled her boyfriend in through a window for coital purposes; one who stole tins of beans and hid them under her bed, and one who kept the shepherd's pie warm by folding it up in her duvet.

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist I am writing this column more than 48 hours after the rapper Wiley let loose a vile and bile-filled stream of racist invective on social media. His obscenity-ridden rants ran the usual gamut of grossly bigoted tropes.

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist OUCH! Hasn't Her Majesty set the bar stratospherically high for all ordinary grandmas everywhere? Rocking up on your own two feet at your granddaughter's wedding, looking downright sensational at 94, is astounding in itself. Arriving on the arm of your husband who, at 99, still exudes military bearing in immaculate morning dress is one heck of an achievement.

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist I KEEP catching myself doing it. I wager you're doing it too. Despite the evidence to the contrary and the professors intoning their mantra - "A vaccine may never be found. This virus could be with us forever" - don't you find yourself somehow convinced that the whole ghastly thing will be over by September? As TS Eliot wrote, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality".

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist We've chubbed-up something chronic in lockdown. In fact, we're fatter than pigs. We're banqueting for Britain. Food has been our solace, our escape, our consolation prize and our entertainment. At first we ate feverishly, lest we developed a fever and lost the urge to chomp.

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist Oh, we do like to be beside the seaside - or in a forest, up a mountain, down a valley or frankly, anywhere at all that isn't home sweet home. Psychologists confirm that we benefit immeasurably from a change of scene. Even those who live in a sylvan idyll pep up enormously after a few deep breaths of polluted urban air.

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist YOU may think that you know your columnist, dear reader. You may imagine that when I'm not writing I spend my time playing the lute, annotating opera scores, admiring Etruscan murals and composing hexameters. Alas, you have me wrong. I might occasionally brush up against a Shakespearean sonnet, but given the choice I adore nothing more than a good old shop.

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist WHO would have guessed Prince Charles would turn out to be one of lockdown's stand-out stars? His comments about longing to hug his grandchildren struck a chord with cuddle-starved folk the world over. We knew him as a plant-whisperer, a chap whose valet "draws his bath", a fervent letter-scribbler with passionate views on everything from architecture to genetically modified sweetcorn.

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist I love my friends. Obviously I do. I chose them. I admire their kindness, beauty and intellect. So how can it be that last weekend an assortment of my cherished chums declared variations of the following over the phone, Zoom and a two-metre chasm in the park? Their pleas include "I'm so over social distancing!" and "I'm absolutely certain I won't get it. I have a positive mental attitude.

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist Boris Johnson speaking of Dominic Cummings: "I think he followed the instincts of every father and every parent, and I do not mark him down for that." The entire nation - regardless of political inclination - yells right back at Boris: "Malevolent COVID-19 requires us to go against our most deeply felt human instincts.

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out - isn't pretty. It's a guaranteed pathway to perdition. Lockdown has been a blessing for those of us afflicted with the syndrome most famously exhibited by TS Eliot's favourite feline the Rum Tum Tugger: "When you let him in, then he wants to be out: He's always on the wrong side of every door.

express.co.uk — Adele before she lost weight (Image: Getty)This Adele hue and cry means we haven't morphed into lockdown saints. That ongoing discussion about how coronavirus would "change us forever" has worried me: that we'd evaluate our priorities, abandon our sins, care for our neighbours more than ourselves and never again waste money on pricey coffee or having our toe-nails painted. I can't bear the thought of a world full of reformed characters, trudging along the path of virtue and renouncing fripperies.

express.co.uk — Richard and Judy –he can go out, she cannot (Image: ITV)These naysayers have a field day taking bets on how long their fragile arrangements will last. "You mark my words, when she realises she's turned into his nurse – or he gets sick of pushing her about in a bath chair – it'll be curtains."I'd been so inculcated with caveats and dire prognostications that I never for a single second dreamt I'd end up in an ongoing 14-year entanglement with a chap ten years my junior.

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist LABELS, who needs them? Do you really want to be branded a lockdown "accepter", "sufferer" or "resister"? What is the point of shoving us into personality pigeonholes as if we are predestined to capitulate, throw in the towel, or give up? PUBLISHED: 10:31, Tue, Apr 28, 2020 | UPDATED: 10:48, Tue, Apr 28, 2020 Resister, accepter or sufferer? Whih are you?

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist REMEMBER the phrase: "He had a good war"? When we heard it at school it seemed an oxymoron. I recall our history teacher, sensing our confusion, elaborating thus: "For some war was deadly. The bereaved and the disabled never recovered. For some it was a hiatus, a long and frightening test of endurance. Yet some excelled.

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist WHO knew, amid all the panic and anxiety, our dominant lockdown obsession would be food? We're either queuing for it - at the right social distance, of course - or sleuthing out delivery slots with Kojak-like cunning. PUBLISHED: 07:20, Tue, Apr 14, 2020 | UPDATED: 07:44, Tue, Apr 14, 2020 How would we cope without the sainted Jamie Oliver?

express.co.uk — Express. Home of the Daily and Sunday Express. Vanessa Feltz TV presenter, broadcaster and journalist WE DON'T usually think of the Queen as the "mother of the nation". PUBLISHED: 07:59, Tue, Apr 7, 2020 | UPDATED: 08:05, Tue, Apr 7, 2020 The phrase is a bit like "First Lady": not quite British and not really us. She's our constant, our monarch, a figure of fortitude and uncomplaining sacrifice, and the very embodiment of duty. But our mother? Not so much.

express.co.uk — Some are finding lockdown easier than others (Image: Ian Forsyth/Getty)Ignoring excellent advice, we slept in ridiculously late, bumbled about in our pyjamas getting on each other's nerves and one of us – him – even had a chocolate bar for breakfast. Naturally, we resolved to focus on improving activities. He was going to master the art of elementary guitar playing. I was going to devour every unread tome on my over-stacked bookshelves.