WHEN Vanessa Feltz was studying English literature at Cambridge, the last thing she expected to end up doing was playing the genie in pantomime.

However, as she has come to realise more than anyone, life throws up many surprises and she is brimming with enthusiasm for her latest role in Aladdin at the New Victoria Theatre, Woking, this Christmas.

Meeting her for the first time is just a little disconcerting. Despite the blaze of publicity which has trailed every detail of her very famous weight loss, in the flesh her diminutive appearance still takes you by surprise.

Coupled with the flaxen, extended locks and Caribbean tan, this really is a living transformation; a pure glamour queen, unrecognisable from her heftier days on the Vanessa Show.

With pantos not renowned for providing the most flattering of costume, the crucial question then, is how does the new image-conscious Feltz feel about her garish garb,

"I love it, it shows a bit of cleavage, and its my favourite shade of pink.The designer was terrified apparently, he drove all the way here in a terrible stew, poor thing, but I love it."

With her natural exuberance and love of performing it is a surprise that the joys of pantomime have eluded her for so long,

"I've been asked to do it every year for the last seven years and I was either working or my husband had booked a holiday.

"I always thought it would be a fun thing to do and life takes so many unexpected turns. As soon I as I was asked to do it, I thought this is my first year as an independent person and I'm going to do it."

This will be her first stab at acting, something she would like to progress on to the small screen. You could imagine her perhaps in a sit com, taking a title role in an American-style show like Roseanne or Ellen, but her response is surprising:

"I don't see myself in a sit com, I'd like to have a go at straight acting. I may be crap at it but I'll have a go."

It is this typical forthright and frank confidence which has led to her successful but turbulent career.

It all began as a journalist, working on a campaign magazine, before progressing to being a columnist on the Daily Mirror, the Express, She Magazine and Woman's Own.

The entertainment business to which she seems so magnetically drawn, was never part of a career plan and took her completely by surprise.

You feel she has a love/hate relationship with a world which has been the scene of both disappointment and triumph in equal measure,

"I didn't think I stood a hope in hell of making it. I didn't know how you got to be in this kind of work."

With her determined and articulate confidence, it comes as no surprise that she has made it in the most competitive industry of all.

Her Vanessa Show saw her as the first-ever British host of an Oprah Winfrey-style talk show and her during her stint on the Big Breakfast she interviewed everyone from Madonna to Eddie Murphy.

Her love of challenges has seen her participate in Celebrity Big Brother for Comic Relief and most recently Celebrity Sleepover as well as maintaining her newspaper and magazine columns although she admits,: "I much prefer the entertainment world to writing. Telly is much more sociable than sitting at a word processor on your own."

Not surprising for someone who has endured a rollercoaster year both professionally and personally, Vanessa Feltz has no long-term plans and cannot imagine what she will be doing next year. At the moment, her most pressing concerning is learning her lines for the panto.

She feels her unscripted live experience of the Vanessa Show will prepare her for the hazards of ad libbing and the unexpected, but adds: "I need to bloody rehearse, I absolutely need to."

Caroline Bullock