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Carol Jean Vorderman (born 24 December 1960) is a Welsh broadcaster, media personality, and writer. Her media career began when she joined the Channel 4 game show Countdown, appearing with Richard Whiteley from 1982 until his death in 2005, and subsequently with Des Lynam and Des O'Connor, before leaving in 2008.
While appearing on Countdown, Vorderman began presenting shows for ITV, including How 2 (1990–1996), Better Homes (1999–2003) and The Pride of Britain Awards (1999–present), as well as guest hosting shows, such as Have I Got News for You (2004–2006) and The Sunday Night Project (2006). She was a presenter on the ITV talk show Loose Women from 2011 until 2014. She has also appeared as a contestant on reality shows, including Strictly Come Dancing (2004), I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! (2016) and The Great Celebrity Bake-Off (2020), winning the last. Since 2022, Vorderman has been a news-reviewer for This Morning.
Vorderman was honoured as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to broadcasting in the Queen's Birthday Honours in June 2000. She has also worked as a newspaper columnist and nominal author of educational and diet books. In 2023, Vorderman began presenting her own show for the talk radio station LBC, but has since stepped down from presenting regularly on the station.
Vorderman was educated at Blessed Edward Jones Catholic High School in nearby Rhyl. In 1978, aged 17, she began studying engineering at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. She left with a third-class degree, a result which she has described as having been "disappointing". Vorderman did not trace the Dutch side of her family until 2007 (as part of the BBC genealogy programme Who Do You Think You Are?). It was only then that she discovered that her father had been an active member of the Dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation. He died while the programme was being filmed. Her great-grandfather Adolphe Vorderman played a key role in the discovery of vitamins.
The group recorded, among other songs, a version of The Undertones' hit "Teenage Kicks" (one of the tracks Vorderman had to identify during the "intros round" when she appeared on Never Mind the Buzzcocks in December 2009; the series often includes questions from contestants' pasts).
During 1984–85, Vorderman made regular appearances on the Peter Levy show on Radio Aire, appearing mid-morning to read a story for pre-school children. In the mid-1980s, Vorderman worked part-time in the Information Services Department of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, principally in the production of in-house video programmes.
Initially, Vorderman's only contribution to the show was the numbers game, and she formed part of a five-person presentation team, billed as one of the "vital statisticians" along with Linda Barrett. However, over the following years, the team was pared down, and Vorderman began handling tiles for both the letters and numbers games.Carol Vorderman, It All Counts (Headline Publishing Group, 2010). Vorderman thus became a new type of game show hostess, revealing her intellectual ability by carrying out fast and accurate arithmetic calculations during the numbers game to reach an exact solution if neither contestant was able to do so. Her lasting success on the show led to her becoming one of the highest-paid women in Britain, ultimately earning her an estimated £1 million per year.
Vorderman recorded her last Countdown show on 13 November 2008 which was broadcast on 12 December 2008. Both of her children were in the audience, together with many of the previous guests from "Dictionary Corner". After the prizegiving at the end of the show, Des O'Connor was presented with a bouquet of flowers by the show's lexicographer Susie Dent, and Vorderman received one from Gyles Brandreth. She was too moved to complete her farewells. A special show, One Last Consonant, Please Carol, hosted by Brandreth and featuring Vorderman's highs and lows during the 26 years of the show, was also filmed and transmitted just before her final Countdown appearance.
After leaving Countdown, Vorderman continued to contribute her column to the British magazine Reveal. Channel 4 admitted in 2009 that all Countdown presenters had always worn , and that producers would "sometimes supply extra ideas as there are often multiple options to ensure viewers are given the best possible answers." A source close to Vorderman denied that she had worn an earpiece or cheated in her mental arithmetic answers.
On 14 July 2014, Vorderman announced her departure as a presenter on Loose Women. Vorderman explained:
In 2016, Vorderman finished in eighth place in the sixteenth series of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! On 7 April 2020, Vorderman appeared on The Great Stand Up to Cancer Bake Off and won. Broadcast on S4C on 19 April 2020, Vorderman took part in the show Iaith ar Daith ('Language Road Trip') and, with the help of Owain Wyn Evans, learned Welsh language and completed various challenges in the language. An extra episode, Iaith ar Daith 'Dolig ('Language Road Trip: Christmas') was broadcast at the end of 2020, interviewing each of the celebrities about whether they were still making use of their Welsh and the opportunities they had had to use Welsh during lockdown.
In 2023, Vorderman appeared in I'm a Celebrity... South Africa. On 16 June 2023, she appeared as herself in Episode 1 of the BBC One comedy Queen of Oz. Vorderman is seen and heard on her radio programme questioning the outrageous antics of spoiled spare to the British crown, Princess Georgiana, played by Catherine Tate.
| 1982–2008 | Countdown | Vital statistician Co-presenter (4,832 episodes) | Channel 4 |
| 1987–1989 | Take Nobody's Word for It | Co-presenter | BBC1 |
| 1990–1996, 1998 | How 2 | Co-presenter | CITV (ITV) |
| 1993 | World Chess Championship | Co-presenter | Channel 4 |
| 1994 | Tomorrow's World | Co-presenter | BBC1 |
| Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe | Narrator | ITV | |
| 1996 | Entertainment Today | Presenter | ITV |
| Out of this World | Presenter | BBC1 | |
| 1997 | Hot Gadgets | Presenter | |
| The Antiques Inspectors | Presenter | ||
| 1998 | Points of View | Presenter | |
| What Will They Think of Next | Presenter | ITV | |
| 1999 | Dream House | Main presenter | BBC One |
| 1999–2003 | Better Homes | Presenter | ITV |
| 1999–present | Pride of Britain Awards | Presenter | |
| 2000 | Star Lives | Presenter | |
| 2001–2002 | Britain's Brainiest Kid | Presenter | |
| 2004 | Strictly Come Dancing | Contestant | BBC One |
| 2004, 2006, 2023, 2024 | Have I Got News for You | Guest host, guest panellist | |
| 2005–2006 | Carol's Big Brain Game | Co-presenter | Sky One |
| 2006 | The Sunday Night Project | Guest presenter | Channel 4 |
| 2008 | One Last Consonant, Please Carol | Subject | |
| 2011, 2018–2019, 2022 | Lorraine | Guest presenter (26 episodes) | ITV |
| 2011–2014 | Loose Women | Presenter | |
| 2013 | Food Glorious Food | Presenter | |
| 2016 | I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! | Participant | |
| 2020 | Iaith ar Daith | Participant | S4C |
| 2020–present | The Wheel | Expert (multiple episodes) | BBC One |
| 2021 | Carol Vorderman: Closer to Home | Presenter | BBC One Wales |
| Great British Menu | Guest judge; Series 16 – The Finals: Main Course | BBC Two | |
| Pride of Britain Awards | Co-host | ITV | |
| 2022 | Beat the Chasers | Contestant | ITV |
| 2022–2023 | This Morning | News Reviewer (2022–2023) | ITV |
| 2023 | Taskmaster's New Year Treat | Contestant | Channel 4 |
| I'm a Celebrity... South Africa | Contestant | ITV | |
| Queen of Oz | Herself | BBC One | |
| RuPaul's Drag Race UK | Herself; Guest judge (Series 5) | BBC Three | |
| Steph's Packed Lunch | Herself; Guest host (one episode) | Channel 4 | |
| The Masked Singer | Contestant / Reindeer (one episode) | ITV 1 | |
| 2024 | Cooking with the Stars | Contestant | ITV |
| 2025 | Celebrity Puzzling | Team captain | 5 |
In the autumn of 2008, soon after she completed her final regular Countdown show, Vorderman announced a new commercial venture, her own property development and sales company that would specialise in overseas holiday and retirement homes in the Caribbean, including the Bahamas, and Spain. It was called Carol Vorderman Overseas Homes Limited. She saw the company as a natural extension of her own experiences in buying and selling properties over recent years and was aiming at a target market of "families aged 35 plus". However, due to the 2008 financial crisis, the venture proved short-lived. During March 2009 Vorderman publicly withdrew her name from the firm, which suspended trading soon afterwards. On 2 March 2010, Vorderman publicly launched her new commercial venture of an online mathematics coaching system for 4- to 12-year-old children under the name of the MathsFactor.
On 20 November 2014, Vorderman accepted the appointment of ambassador to the Royal Air Force Air Cadets, and was granted the honorary rank of group captain in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (Training Branch). In 2017, her honorary commission was extended to 19 November 2020. Vorderman has also taken up learning the Welsh language and has been using the Say Something in Welsh online course. In early 2020, she said "I've been learning Welsh ... and I love it. It's taken me back to my roots".
After meeting at a Christmas party in 1999, Vorderman and Des Kelly lived together in London from 2001, also using their other house in Glandore, West Cork, Ireland. After five years together, Vorderman and Kelly separated in December 2006, publicly announcing the amicable split in January 2007, and after a brief reconciliation in Bristol, according to reports.
Vorderman shares her Bristol home with her two children. Vorderman lived with or very near to her mother all her life, until her mother's death in 2017. On 6 June 2020, she complained in a number of UK newspapers of being harassed by photographers in the road outside her home. Vorderman in 2022 declared a lack of interest in traditional monogamy, preferring to have "special friends" with benefits.
In 2023, Vorderman was critical of the Conservative administration, labelling it a "despicable government", and described herself as being politically independent. In 2022, Vorderman was praised by The Herald as the "real leader of the opposition" after criticising members of the government for exploiting their positions for personal gain.
In November 2023, the BBC objected to Vorderman's social media postings reflecting her personal opinions; she said that she would "not be silenced" by the BBC's new social media guidelines, and resigned from her weekly BBC Radio Wales show. She immediately made several posts criticising several people and policies of the Conservative government in power at the time. She referred to the then government as "a lying bunch of greedy, corrupt, destructive, hateful, divisive, gaslighting crooks". In late 2023, she became the face of tactical voting initiative StopTheTories.vote.
In August 2024 she delivered the Alternative MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival, saying "Our industry is full of snobbery – regional snobbery, class snobbery and educational snobbery – and don't even get me started on the political issues...Working class people feel they are not represented, their situation is not represented, the lack of opportunities and lack of money and jobs is not represented...What social gives everyone, in towns and cities outside the wealthy south-east, the opportunity to do, is to see and hear views they recognise, in language they recognise."
Vorderman was voted UK Female Rear of the Year in 2011. In 2014, she became the first celebrity to win the award twice. In November 2021, she was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Institution of Engineering and Technology in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the engineering profession.
Vorderman appeared in a short film, Run for the future, promoting prostate cancer awareness, and took part in a charity run held every year on the Bristol Downs to raise funds for the BUI prostate appeal. She also took part in the Great North Run on several occasions, to raise money for Marie Curie Cancer Care in memory of Richard Whiteley's sister Helen, who died of cancer. Vorderman is an active supporter and advocate of the RAF Association charity, appearing at airshows and taking part in other fundraising events.
Charity work
Vorderman is a patron of the Cleft Lip and Palate Association (CLAPA) (her older brother, Anton, was born with a cleft lip and palate). In 2005, she was the winner of Ant and Dec's Gameshow Marathon. As part of its 50th anniversary celebrations ITV ran a series of the nation's favourite game shows featuring celebrities competing to become Gameshow Marathon winner and raise money for the charity of their choice. As series winner Vorderman won £60,000 for CLAPA. In November 2011, she appeared in the music video in aid of CLAPA for New Vorder's Carol O Carol, a song written by Jim Salveson in 1999 about his love for Vorderman, and directed by Tim Cocker.
Videos and published writings
See also
External links
Categories: 1960 Births, Living People, 20th-century Welsh Writers, 21st-century Welsh Writers, 20th-century Welsh Women Writers, 21st-century Welsh Women Writers, Alternative Detoxification Promoters, Alumni Of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Bbc Radio Wales Presenters, British Women Pop Singers, Channel 4 People, Daily Mirror People, The Daily Telegraph People, Fellows Of The Institution Of Engineering And Technology, Lbc Radio Presenters, Members Of The Order Of The British Empire, Mensans, People Associated With Bangor University, People Associated With The University Of Bath, People Educated At Blessed Edward Jones Rc High School, People From Bedford, People From Prestatyn, Royal Air Force Officers Holding Honorary Commissions, Welsh Columnists, Welsh People Of Dutch Descent, Welsh Roman Catholics, Welsh Women Columnists, Welsh Women Television Presenters
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