Vanessa Feltz reveals why Celebrity Traitors star Jonathan Ross is 'one of my heroes'
Broadcaster Vanessa Feltz was "shaking and shivering" after her ex-husband Michael Kurer left her and their daughters Allegra and Saskia, and Jonathan Ross came to her rescue.
Jonathan Ross came to Vanessa Feltz's aid on the day her ex-husband abruptly left her and their two children.
TV presenter Vanessa was "shaking and shivering" while on a school run, just moments after surgeon Michael Kurer - whom she married in 1983, divorced in 2000, and has daughters Allegra, 39, and Saskia, 36, with - packed a suitcase and moved out of their family home, six weeks into Vanessa's 12-week mission to become as thin as fast as she could to make Michael fall in love with her again.
Broadcaster Jonathan, 64, who took one of his children - daughters Betty, 34, Honey, 28, and 31-year-old son Harvey - to school at the same time, noticed that Vanessa was struggling, and he immediately "swept" the star up to comfort her.
Vanessa, 63, exclusively told BANG Showbiz at the 2025 Best Heroes Awards, sponsored by DFS: "One of my heroes is Jonathan Ross.
"On the day that I took my daughter to school, on the day that my husband had left us, [Jonathan] was there taking his own child, and he said, ‘Oh my gosh, are you alright?’
"And I said, ‘Well, no, not really.’
"And he said, ‘Come with me.’
"And he swept me up, and he took me for a hot chocolate to warm me up. I was shaking and shivering, and he was really fantastic, and I’ve always loved him ever since because he’s a kind man."
Jonathan is starring in BBC's Celebrity Traitors - which sees 19 celebrities work together to sniff out the Traitors so that the Faithfuls can share the £100,000 prize money, which will be donated to a charity of their choice.
The film critic is playing as a Traitor alongside 49-year-old comedian Alan Carr and 25-year-old singer-songwriter Cat Burns, and Vanessa thinks Jonathan is playing a cracking game so far.
Vanessa said: "It’s so funny because he’s a Traitor at the moment. It’s so funny because I know him as the real Jonathan, and I think he’s absolutely adorable. He’s a kind, sweet-natured, lovely person.
"I think he’s doing very, very well. I think he’s really doing the right thing, and that’s playing it as a game, and being amused by it, rather than taking it deadly seriously.
"I think he’s doing a fantastic job."
Vanessa previously recalled her and Michael's brutal break-up after 17 years of marriage.
In 2024, she told the Express: "I thought I was happily married, and I thought he thought I was lovely.
"I thought I was lucky to love a man who loved me back. I loved him very much and thought a whole life by his side would never be long enough."
Vanessa felt disoriented with what Michael - whom she refers to as the "Good Doctor" in her 2024 autobiography, Vanessa Bares All - told her in a "staccato Dalek voice" one Sunday morning in October 1999.
She remembered: "He said, ‘I do not rule out the possibility of a divorce.'
"I was crying, shaking, trying to hold his hand. Why?"
Vanessa recalled Michael replying: "You are just so fat, so fat. It’s hideous. You are hideous. I keep waiting for you to get diabetes."
She then said: "I couldn’t breathe properly. I could hardly see. This couldn’t be happening."
Vanessa added that Michael gave her a 12-week trial for her to lose weight so he could see that “underneath the fat I have bones and features”, he would remember that she is “pretty, and fall in love with me again”.
The star - who went on an apples and hard-boiled eggs diet to consume less than 300 calories a day and train seven days a week - recalled: "I had to win the trial.
"I had to save my marriage, keep my daughters’ father in our family home to raise and nurture them. This wasn’t a challenge I could fail."
But six weeks into her project, Michael told Allegra and Saskia that he and Vanessa no longer loved each other and that he was moving out - something Vanessa has never forgiven him for.
She said: "I think that one can forgive on one’s own behalf. But I feel very differently about anyone who does anything to my children, especially the person who is meant to love them the most in the world.
"I can’t forgive anyone who causes my children pain, shock and grief, and thoroughly destabilises them."
