Vanessa Feltz's ex-husband brutally labelled her 'so fat' before cruel ultimatum

was left blindsided after her first husband issued her with a shocking ultimatum, cruelly referring to her as 'disgustingly fat'.

The broadcaster, whose new book is being serialised in the , married consultant orthopaedic surgeon after being introduced to him by her grandmother. Just ten weeks later, they were engaged.

For 16 years, had believed she and Michael to be blissfully happy. They went on to welcome their daughters Saskia, now 35, and Allegra, now 38.

But one Sunday in September 1999, he blindsided her.

“I was joking about being broody,” she recalls. “Then out of nowhere, he said in a Dalek-like voice: ‘I-do-not-rule-out-the-possibility-of-a-divorce’.”

She asked the only question she could: “why?”. His reply was chilling.

“‘You are just so fat, so fat. It’s hideous’,” Vanessa remembers him saying. “‘You are hideous. I keep waiting for you to get diabetes’.”

The star, who was a normal size 18, went into shock.

“I couldn’t breathe properly. I could hardly see,” she recalls.

A few days later Michael outrageously offered her a 12-week “trial” period to save the marriage.

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Sticking to just 300 calories a days, while training seven days a week, Vanessa lived off apples and hard-boiled eggs, determined to win the 'trial' she'd been set.

Vanessa, who was then a size 18, explains: "I had to win the trial. Saskia was 10 and Allegra was 14. This wasn't a challenge I could fail."

Six weeks into her drastic lifestyle change, Vanessa discovered she'd dropped at least one dress size and held out hope that she and Michael could work through their rough patch.

Then, one night, Vanessa says Michael simply leapt out of bed, packed his suitcase and left. He later admitted he had fallen for someone else.

The following day, Michael returned to tell their children that he and Vanessa "no longer loved each other" and that he would be leaving the family home.

Vanessa was shaken by his matter-of-fact delivery, and her daughters were distraught.

She says: "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 . So I cannot feel that I can forgive. I don’t feel that I can forgive anybody who does anything to cause my children pain and shock and grief and thoroughly destabilise them.”

by Vanessa Feltz (Transworld, £22), published October 24.

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