I had an affair with Vanessa Feltz’s cheating fiancé: Businesswoman tells how she fell ‘hopelessly in love’ with ‘womanising’ Ben Ofoedu – and why she decided to send his TV star partner bombshell email exposing their fling
- EXCLUSIVE: Beachclub owner ‘Ella’ revealed details of fling with ‘octopus’ Ben
- She fell ‘hopelessly in love’ after string of encounters in Thailand and Ibiza
- ‘Ella’ confronted his fiancée Vanessa Feltz when she found out who he was
A woman who had an affair with Vanessa Feltz’s cheating fiancé has told for the first time how she sent a bombshell email to the broadcaster, followed by an ‘awkward’ phonecall, in which she blew the whistle on Ben Ofoedu’s ‘serial womanising’.
She told Vanessa she had been ‘hopelessly in love’ with Ofoedu after a series of steamy encounters in Ibiza and Thailand.
But she insisted that the BBC Radio 2 host deserved to know her partner had tried to seduce at least three other younger women.
The successful businesswoman – who bears a close resemblance to Vanessa Feltz – said she initially had no idea that Ofoedu had a long-term partner when her romance with him began, and she broke off the relationship as soon as she found out.
But beachclub owner and restaurateur Ella*, 59, who does not wish to use her real name, described Ofoedu as ‘an octopus who has no respect for women’ and said she wanted to set the record straight after he ‘peddled lies’ about their year-long fling.
Businesswoman ‘Ella’, who had an affair with Vanessa Feltz’s cheating fiancé Ben Ofoedu, has told for the first time how she sent a bombshell email to the broadcaster. Pictured: ‘Ella’ with Ofoedu
‘Ella’ spoke exclusively to MailOnline about her fling with Phats & Small star Ofoedu in a series of encounters in Ibiza and Thailand behind the back of his fiancé Vanessa Feltz
Ofoedu, described by ‘Ella’ as ‘an octopus who has no respect for women’, pictured with Vanessa at the Amy Winehouse Foundation Gala at The Savoy Hotel in 2015
After the email, Ella and Vanessa had a ‘difficult’ phone conversation during which Vanessa told her that what she and Ofoedu had done was ‘very wrong’.
‘Once the trust is gone then you can’t get it back’: Vanessa Feltz chokes back tears as she reveals ‘disappointment and shock’ at claims her partner Ben Ofoedu cheated on her
In the email, Ella wrote to Vanessa: ‘I was aware of his relationship with you, and I felt very guilty but he pursued me so much I couldn’t resist his charm.
‘I was terrified sending that email,’ said Ella, ‘and even more so when Vanessa called me back. I completely understood her anger at me and I certainly didn’t respond angrily to her, but it was a very awkward conversation.’
Despite the revelations about Ofoedu’s behaviour in the email and phone call, Vanessa apparently decided to forgive him.
Earlier this month however, Vanessa announced she had finally dumped Phats and Smalls singer Ben, 50, after a series of other illicit relationships emerged.
Mother-of-one Ella has remained silent for six years, but only decided to speak out after she said Ben insulted her in his toe-curling mea culpa interview last week, in which he described their relationship as ‘purely sexual with no feelings involved’ and — most disparagingly — that sex with her was ‘almost a chore’.
He even suggested that Ella may have been older than Vanessa.
Ella told MailOnline: ‘I have been painted as a trollop, when in fact I have a successful career and I’m a single mum, who’s worked hard all my life. As for the sex being a “chore”? Up chores, Ben!
‘I’m also six months younger than Vanessa, for what it’s worth.
‘I fell in love with Ben, and he went all out to seduce me, but once I became aware that he was in another relationship, I broke it off. I put myself in Vanessa’s position and asked myself if I would want to know, and I decided it was the right thing to do.
‘I had no agenda, I just wanted to tell her, woman to woman, and then it was up to her.
‘I would never have gone public about this if Ben hadn’t disrespected me once again, by trying to paint me as some kind of sl*t in the papers last week. ‘
Ofoedu claims he’s been booted out of his Vanessa’s £3.5M gothic mansion in leafy St John’s Wood, north London since the revelation from his fling with ‘Ella’
‘Ella’ revealed the affair to broadcaster Vanessa in an explosive email followed by a ‘difficult’ phone call between the two
‘When I saw Vanessa on TV, and she announced that they’d split, I saw a genuinely broken woman and all the memories came flooding back for me.
‘Then when I read what Ben was saying about me.
‘He is a serial liar, he drinks too much. And he becomes an octopus with women. He is also a vile, lying love rat.’
‘He messed with my life, with my head and my heart. He described our relationship as a three-day romp, but it went on over the space of a year.’
Ella and Ben when she hired him and his band for a gig at her club in Ibiza.
Afterwards, they went for a drink with a group of club staff.
Ella recalled: ‘I was heading home and he said to me, ‘Would you like me to walk you home?’
‘Ella’s’ EXPLOSIVE email in full – sent on November 10, 2017
‘Dear Vanessa, my name is Ella. I wish to seriously complain to you about Ben. I employed Ben as part of Phats and Small in Summer 2016. He seduced me and continued the affair over that summer. I never asked anything of him.
‘I was aware of his relationship with you, and I felt very guilty but he pursued me so much I couldn’t resist his charm. I took him to Thailand to work and told him we should just be friends.
‘However, he relentlessly pursued me, and I gave in. I was hopelessly in love with him and on the third day of being in Thailand of unrelentless sex, he decided to dump me. I was upset, I went mad.
‘He got drunk and hit on my 16 year old’s tutor in front of my son and tried to take her to his room after a gig. I was mortified and it was hell.
‘I had worked commitments with Phats and Small and continued to employ them last summer, leaving it very clear that it was over between Ben and me. On the first two gigs it was easy I flew them in and out, on the third gig he came over for five days and relentlessly pursued me again.
‘Why am I telling you? I’m sure he will try to bulls**t you with his lies. But I’m a hard-working successful woman like you and at least we deserve to know the truth.
‘I’m not going to the press, nor am I blackmailing you – or him – in any way. I wouldn’t do that. But as from one woman to another woman, I think you should know.
Regards, Ella’
‘Ben comes across as kind, humble, charming, lovely, fun – a great entertainer, so I didn’t think there was anything in it. As we were about to go our separate ways, he said ‘I really like you in that LBD’ and I didn’t know what that was and he had to explain it was a little black dress. I laughed it off as him having a little flirt and said goodnight.
‘But with that, he just grabbed me and started a passionate kiss. I pushed him away and said ‘I’m professional and I don’t mess with anyone working with me.’ He still said ‘Come on, come back to my room.’ I said I was going home and that was that.’
There were three or four gigs that Summer and Ella explained that she had fond memories of Phats and Small’s hit Turnaround from the 1990s.
Ben returned to Ibiza for a second gig a few weeks later, and Ella said: ‘This time he was out to seduce me, he was on my case like a bee around a honeypot.
‘It was great for my ego, and I was single and I had no idea about Vanessa at that stage. He was aiming to make me feel special
‘We went back to his place and that night I fell for his charms. He left the next day and I knew he was coming back the following month.
‘On the third time he came back we went out on a boat together and he wined and dined me and made me feel special again, and it happened again.’
Privately-educated Ella, who splits her time between Ibiza and Thailand, said she was completely out of touch with most British TV stars and celebrities at the time, but she was in for a shock the next day.
‘I went into my club bar and a customer came said ‘Wow, you’re just like Vanessa!’ I said ‘Who’s Vanessa?’ and she explained it was Ben’s partner Vanessa Feltz. Everything emptied inside of me, I was so angry and hurt that I’d been taken for a fool.
‘I went to Ben and I finished it. I said I know you’re in a relationship and this is over. He was leaving a few hours later and I was pretty upset.’
She returned to England soon afterwards to tend to her mother who was ill in hospital, but Ben continued to text her on WhatsApp, with nice messages and even a clip of him singing happy birthday to her.
The next contact came the following February when Ella signed Phats and Small for a short tour in Thailand.
She recalled: ‘I said to him that we could continue as mates and work together, but that would be all. The first gig was in Phuket and the night before as I left the group to get a taxi, Ben appeared behind me and grabbed my arm, turning me around. He said ‘You’ve got two ways to go – that way,’ pointing at the taxi ‘or this way,’ pointing at himself.
‘He was so persistent and such a seducer, I thought maybe he’s thought about it and there’s going to be something between him and me because he was so insistent. We then had two wonderful nights in Phuket together in the Hotel Laguna. He was passionate, there was loads of sex, all night long, falling asleep and then at it again. It was non-stop, juicy, loving and hot.’
She then produced a photograph of Ben lying naked on the bed, but refused permission to publish it in any form.
She said: ‘I got completely hooked on Ben, because even apart from the sex, he makes you feel so special and he comes across as such a nice guy. He’s all about the seduction.
‘He talks about every subject under the sun and says he’s so religious. Knowing what I know now though, I certainly wouldn’t want to go to whatever church he goes to!
‘In Phuket he started talking about Vanessa. I said ‘what’s happening with your relationship? You’ve come here and you’re here with me, so what’s going on?’
‘He said ‘She’s always putting me down.’ I later thought that was very revealing – he blames everyone except himself.
‘At one point I mentioned how I wanted a tummy tuck and he said ‘You’re just like her, talking about your weight all the time.’
‘He doesn’t need therapy, he needs to have some respect for women. ‘
After the torrid two night-stay in Phuket, the band’s next gig was on the island of Koh Samui on Valentine’s Day, but Ella immediately noticed that Ben was distant and cold towards her.
After the concert, Ella was chatting with her 16-year-old son’s female tutor, who had helped with the gig.
‘Ella’ claimed Ofoedu ‘went all out to seduce me’ while engaged to Vanessa (right) but now says he is a ‘vile, lying love rat’
Recalled Ella: ‘She said, ‘I know how much Ben means to you. And I think you should know. He’s just approached me and invited me back to his room – this was all done in front of your son.’ I was horrified.’
Deeply upset, Ella would receive more bad news before the third gig at the resort of Pattaya, where she was chatting with a 19-year-old Thai girl she hired to help hand out fliers.
‘I was trying to put on a cheerful face, despite how I was feeling and I asked her if she was having a good time, and she replied: ‘Yes, it’s all been lovely, but that guy who is singing [Ben] keeps coming onto me and in Koh Samui he kept asking me to go his room.’
‘By this time, my heart was just smashed. I thought how can he be so disrespectful to his partner at home, to me, to the staff and the people working with him.
‘So that night after the gig, we were in a bar called Lucifers and he came up to me at the bar, using all his seduction techniques again, saying he wanted to apologise, he’d drunk too much – all his BS. I went up to him and told him ‘You can f*** off, right now.’
In the summer of 2017 Ella had booked Phats and Small for more gigs, she said Ben hit on her again, but by then she could see through him.
In the weeks after that, she would occasionally see Ben and Vanessa in the media and she began to feel sorry for the radio host.
‘He’s a one-hit wonder from the 90s, whereas she’s a very successful, intelligent, articulate woman who’s come a long way in her life. And through her, he got the limelight and the red-carpet, celebrity treatment
‘I thought if I was her, would I want to know, or would I like to live in a cocoon while my partner was hitting on every woman on the planet?’
So Ella took the difficult decision to blow the whistle on Ben’s philandering.
‘I emailed to Vanessa’s publicly available address at the BBC, not realising that it wouldn’t go straight to her, even though I’d marked it private and confidential. I got a response from someone saying it would be passed to her, as a personal matter.’
To Ella’s surprise, two days later she received a phone call from Vanessa, which lasted 15 minutes.
‘The first time she rang me, I was so shocked I hung up!’ said Ella.
‘She was very upset and so was I. I told her I was so sorry. She was angry with me and she had every right to be.
‘She said ‘What you’ve both done is really bad,’ but I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known about her, and as soon as I did find out about her, I ended it.
‘She didn’t really give me any credit for that, but I get that. Your fiance is jetting off to Ibiza or wherever, and then you find out he’s been having an affair when he was supposed to be working – you’d probably want to beat both of them up.
‘I’m not proud of it, but by the time I found out about the depth of their relationship, my feelings were already too far gone. ‘
The anonymous businesswoman says she bitterly regrets the affair, but not the decision to tell Vanessa
Looking back, Ella said it wasn’t for her to question why Vanessa forgave her partner at that time, but added that she had made the right decision to dump him now.
‘It’s hard to separate from someone and you might be alone, for a week, for a day or forever. ‘But if you don’t walk away from toxicity, you’re never going to have room in your heart for the right person to come along,.
‘I have nothing but respect and sympathy for Vanessa, so this isn’t aimed at her.
‘I said I wouldn’t go public, and I meant it. I kept my silence for six years, and would have remained silent if Ben hadn’t spoken about me in the way he did.’
‘He talked about it as a three-day romp – it may have been for him, but it definitely wasn’t for me.
‘Obviously, it was a short relationship compared to her 16 years, and you can’t compare what I was feeling to hers. But by the time I finished it properly, I knew I was up against a serial cheater.’
Ella does bitterly regret the affair with Ben, but not the decision to inform Vanessa.
‘I told Vanessa because I thought she’s wasting her life on this idiot who is hitting on every woman and cheating whenever he can.’
She is equally keen to set the record straight after Ben’s insulting references to her last week.
‘I don’t want to be treated like some sl*t in a newspaper — that’s what Ben’s done to me. I’ve worked all my life, I’m a single mother and I don’t sleep with men at the drop of a hat, I have to have feelings or chemistry with them.
‘I run a successful business with a team of staff and I love my life. I won’t let him treat me that way. I don’t think any woman should allow that to be done to them which is the reason I told Vanessa.’
Representatives for Vanessa Feltz and Ben Ofoedu were contacted for comment.
· In return for this exclusive interview, Ella will be making a donation to three charities helping victims of the Turkish earthquake; Cambodian orphans and Ukrainian refugees.
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