Vanessa Feltz: I want my grandchildren to see me having adventures

Vanessa Feltz wants to show her young grandchildren she is “up for adventure”.

The Talk TV presenter, who is serving as a judge on the 2023 Pour Moi Uplifting Women Awards, said: “I want them to see that I’m financially independent, I want them to see that it’s incredibly important for a woman to make her own money and be able to exist without the financial support of a man or anyone else.

“And I want them to see me having adventures. I spend quite a lot of my life, including today, being whisked around on the back of a motorbike, and you have to put your leathers on, your helmet on, and jump on the back and whizz through the rain in the snow and everything else.

“I do it because I’m always working so hard, I’m always in a terrific hurry to get wherever I’m going, so I don’t want to sit in traffic in London, which is very crowded. So they see me jump on and off a motorbike,” added the journalist and presenter, whose two grown-up daughters Allegra Benitah and Saskia Joss (from her former marriage to surgeon Michael Kurer) each have two young children of their own, ranging from seven months to nine years of age.

“I was 61 [in February], so I hope they see me kind of up for adventure, looking forward to all sorts of new opportunities, new experiences, new foods, just things that I haven’t done before,” continued Feltz, who regularly shares sweet snaps of life with her beloved grandkids on Instagram.

“And my ideal thing is to take them with me – I don’t really like to experience anything much if my children or grandchildren aren’t around to be part of it with me.”

The Uplifting Women Awards celebrate the achievements of women across the UK across a number of categories, including Charitable Champion, Extraordinary Entrepreneur and Inspiring Woman, with cash prizes of £5,000 up for grabs (nominations are open now until April 5).

“Delighted” to be involved, Feltz said she is “very pleased to help create role models – I think it’s a very important thing to do”.

Reflecting on her own approach to role modelling for her grandchildren, she added: “One of the things we’re going to do this summer is stick a pin in the map of Europe, and go to wherever the pin goes. Just have a kind of adventure.

“The idea of unexpected opportunities and taking ordinary things and making them special and making memories, and the feeling of being unstoppable. You know – nobody else may have done it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it – that feeling.”

For more information about the Pour Moi Uplifting Women Awards, visit pourmoi.co.uk/upliftingwomennominate