Vanessa Feltz needed a bodyguard for six weeks after Celebrity Big Brother meltdown

Vanessa Feltz: 'I was a reality TV pioneer - now a celeb meltdown is obligatory'

TV's Vanessa Feltz made history - twice - when she infamously entered the Celebrity Big Brother House. But her explosive meltdown. would never be allowed to happen today, she says

by · The Mirror

IT’S been 23 years since Vanessa Feltz made Celebrity Big Brother history.

And it’s an honour she should definitely be proud of.

For, we’re not talking about the infamous moment she wrote in chalk on the table and became the first celeb to have a meltdown of such magnitude on reality T

But something far more spectacular….

“I was the first housemate in the world to tell Big Brother to f**k himself”, Vanessa, 62, boasts.

And to be fair, Big Brother certainly had it coming.

Just a year after going through her marriage break-up, TV queen Vanessa had agreed to do the first celebrity version of the show in aid of Comic Relief.

Former boxer,Chris Eubank, Vanessa Feltz, Boyzone's Keith Duffy, Jack Dee, Anthea Turner and Brookside actress Claire Sweeney enter the 2001 Celebrity Big Brother house( Image: Getty Images)

It was uncharted territory in the early days of reality TV - and, as Vanessa would soon learn, it was a lot tougher mentally than anyone could have expected.

After days of trials, rows, Anthea Turner’s tears and Chris Eubank’s rule-flouting, the pressure of the house and especially the nominations was getting to everyone.

And one Sunday morning when Vanessa realised she was likely to be the next evicted, things really began to take their toll.

It wasn’t that she might have to leave that worried her. It was that she was trapped in the ‘social experiment’ for another 36 hours before the live eviction show.

Cue, the infamous meltdown people still ask her about now.

“I reckon I’m still asked what the f**k I was doing writing on the table on average three times a day,” she says in her upcoming memoir Vanessa Bares All: Frank, Funny and Fearless, which is being serialised this weekend exclusively in the Mirror.

“I should have been able to keep a lid on my emotions but I couldn’t.

Rapidly I spiralled into an emotional tailspin, and the fact that I happened to be wearing a leopard-print dressing-gown and black sunglasses indoors at the time added to the spectacle,” remembers Vanessa.

Vanessa Feltz writing on the table during her during the infamous meltdown on Celebrity Big Brother( Image: Channel 4)

“We’d been given chalk. I’d noticed the dining table was made of blackboard. I decided I’d write some appropriate words just to give myself something interesting to read later.”

The words were terrifying. “I wrote IMMOLATED, ISO- LATED, INCARCERATED, IMMURED, DEFENESTRATED, LAMPOONED, DISTRAUGHT, FRAUGHT, ABASHED, DIS- COMBOBULATED, and a whole lot of cries for help,” she recalls.

Today there’s a growing focus on mental health awareness and looking after reality show contestants (with rigorous measures in place on BB and all such shows). But back in 2001, it was a different story.

Big Brother simply demanded over the house speaker that she put down the chalk. It was at that moment she made history - telling Big Brother exactly where ‘he’ could go. The first person to do so, on any country’s version of BB.

Vanessa didn't hide emotions while making reality TV history( Image: Channel 4)

After summoning her to the diary room, Big Brother had his revenge. Sobbing, she pleaded to go home, only to be told exactly why she couldn't leave - in a way that would never be allowed today.

“The voice of Big Brother was brutal: ‘If you walk, Vanessa, you’ll be the most hated woman in Britain’,” she remembers.

“‘Imagine saying that to a sobbing celeb now? You’d be sued, hung out to dry and cancelled.”

Vanessa looking confident and stunning at 62 - in a dress from her own 4Love.uk collection during the Mirror's exclusive at home shoot( Image: OK! Magazine / Alex James)
Vanessa is rightly proud of her brutally-honest memoir, serialised this weekend in the Mirror and out Oct 24

“My daughters say I was a reality TV pioneer. I fell apart, rivulets of tears splashing into my cleavage. The nation was aghast and fascinated. Celebrities didn’t behave like that on TV. Since then, an on-air meltdown is practically obligatory. These days, therapists are on standby to dash to the rescue. Back then, ‘Mental health’ hadn’t been invented.”

There was an upside. TV bosses had to hire a bodyguard for her for six weeks after the show as she kept getting mobbed - by sympathetic fans wanting to give her a hug.

Vanessa Bares All: Frank, Funny and Fearless, by Vanessa Feltz (Transworld, £22), is published on October 24.

NOW READ MORE OF THE MIRROR'S VANESSA FELTZ EXCLUSIVES FROM HER NO-HOLDS BARRED MEMOIR:

Vanessa on dating in her 60s and the frogs she's kissed - 'I've had just aboutenough of being somebody access-all-areas lanyard!'

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