Vorderman initially found employment as a graduate management trainee in Leeds, and in her spare time was briefly a backing singer in the Leeds-based pop group
Dawn Chorus and the Blue Tits, fronted by radio DJ Liz Kershaw during the early 1980s. They recorded songs such as a version of The Undertones' hit
Teenage Kicks (coincidentally, one of the tracks Vorderman had to identify during the "intros round" when she appeared on
Never Mind the Buzzcocks in December 2009). During 1984/85 she made regular appearances on the Peter Levy show on Radio Aire, appearing mid-morning to read a story for any pre-school children who might be listening with their mothers.
Countdown
1982 — June 2005
Vorderman's mother noticed a newspaper advertisement asking for a woman with good mathematical skills to appear as co-host on a quiz show for the fledgling fourth terrestrial channel and submitted an application on behalf of her daughter. Thus, at the age of 21, Vorderman made her name on
Countdown with Richard Whiteley from the show's inception in 1982 until Whiteley's death in June 2005. Initially Vorderman's only contribution to the show was the numbers game and she formed part of a five person presentation team. However, over the coming years the team was pared down and Vorderman's contribution increased. In latter years she was a joint main presenter, co-host and face of the show. Simon Nicol's musical album
Consonant Please Carol (1992) takes its title from the customary dialogue in a show.
After Richard Whiteley
In October 2005, Des Lynam replaced Whiteley and co-hosted with Vorderman. In January 2007 Des O'Connor replaced Lynam; Vorderman continued to co-host the show. Vorderman was a new type of game show hostess, revealing her intellectual ability by carrying out fast and accurate arithmetical calculations as part of the game. Her lasting success on the show led to her becoming one of the highest-paid women in Britain, earning £1 million per year, from all sources.
On 25 July 2008, after her 26 unbroken years with the show it was announced that Vorderman was stepping down from
Countdown. She later said she had resigned after failing to agree terms with Channel 4 for a new contract, and it was reported that she had been asked to take a cut of some 90 per cent of her previous salary, estimated as £900,000. She had considered leaving the show when the original show's host Richard Whiteley died in 2005, but remained on the show when Lynam took over, and until 2008 when his eventual replacement O'Connor announced he was also to step down as the show's host. Vorderman later said that she had "put on a stone from the stress of being 'sacked' from
Countdown". Vorderman and O'Connor both left the show in December 2008.
Final period
The producers auditioned young and currently unknown mathematicians to replace Vorderman and several well known celebrity presenters to replace O'Connor, and on 21 November 2008 it was announced that these would be 22-year-old Oxford graduate Rachel Riley and Sky Sports presenter Jeff Stelling.
Vorderman recorded her last
Countdown show on 13 November 2008 and it was broadcast on 12 December. Both of her children were in the audience together with many of the previous guests from 'Dictionary Corner'. After the prize giving at the end of that 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 Giles Brandreth and featuring Vorderman's highs and lows during 26 years of the show, was also filmed and transmitted just before her final
Countdown appearance.
Other TV appearances
Between 1987 and 1989 she co-hosted the BBC TV series
Take Nobody's Word For It with Professor Ian Fells, and was chosen to compère the world chess championship match between Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short in 1993. Vorderman has worked as a researcher and producer on many shows, specialising in science and educational programmes, and has presented several other television programmes including the BBC's
Tomorrow's World, but was dropped after she starred in a commercial for Ariel washing powder. BBC management claimed it was a conflict of interest and dismissed her from the show. Carol refused to submit to their demand citing numerous other BBC 'stars' who were allowed to advertise products at that time, including Gary Rhodes the BBC chef advertising Tate and Lyle sugar. Weeks later, the ratings had dropped dramatically and the BBC asked her to return to anchor the programme but she refused.
In 1999, having been offered a lucrative contract, Vorderman moved to ITV, going on to compère numerous television programmes including:
The Pride of Britain Awards since year 2000,
Stars and their Lives,
What Will They Think of Next,
Tested to Destruction,
How 2 on CITV and the popular
Better Homes, which began in 1999 and spawned a spin-off
Better Gardens.
Vorderman was a newspaper reviewer on the last episode of
Breakfast with Frost. She was also a guest on
Top Gear, as the Star In A Reasonably Priced Car towards the end of Series 3 in 2003. In 2004 Vorderman appeared on the second series of
Strictly Come Dancing and was voted off the show on the second show of the series. In 2005, Vorderman beat off the other celebrities in ITV's
Gameshow Marathon, winning the series. Vorderman appeared as a guest on
Have I Got News For You on 14 May 2004 and hosted the show on 26 May 2006. She presented the Channel 4 entertainment show
The Friday Night Project on 11 August 2006.
Between 2005 and 2006 she presented Sky One's quiz show
Carol Vorderman's Big Brain Game over two series that have since been repeated twice on the channel during 2007.
On 3 March 2010 Vorderman appeared on BBC One's
Question Time following the announcement from Michael Gove, the UK shadow children's secretary, that she was to head the Conservatives' taskforce on mathematics teaching. Vorderman's appearance was heavily criticised in the media, with show host, David Dimbleby quoted in
The Times as saying: “It lasts an hour, this programme...it felt like more to me.”
In May 2010, she guest anchored ITVs flagship show
Loose Women.
On 18 September 2010 Vorderman co-presented TV coverage of the Papal Vigil in Hyde Park, alongside the established author Frank Cottrell Boyce.
Outside television
Journalism
Vorderman has had newspaper columns in
The Daily Telegraph, and in the
Daily Mirror on Internet topics. She has written books on Detox diets. Her No 1 Bestseller was
Detox For Life, produced in collaboration with Ko Chohan and Anita Bean and published by Virgin Books, which sold over a million copies. She is also a sudoku addict since April 2005 when she wrestled a book of the puzzles from her 12-year-old daughter Katie during a holiday in the Caribbean. Vorderman has written numerous books of sudoku puzzles with help on how to tackle them. She has sold millions of sudoku books worldwide, with almost one million being sold in less than a year in the UK alone.
A large number of school textbooks have been published under her name, chiefly by Dorling Kindersley in series such as
English Made Easy,
Maths Made Easy,
Science Made Easy and
How to Pass National Curriculum Maths.
After leaving
Countdown she continued contributing to her column in the British magazine
Reveal.
Endorsement controversy
Vorderman has maintained a long-standing endorsement of the debt consolidation company
First Plus. In 2006, the charity Credit Action tried to highlight the potential dangers of debt consolidation, calling on Vorderman to stop giving First Plus credibility. Her agent responded that Vorderman had no intention of curtailing the contract for a service which was perfectly legal, offered by an excellent company. When quizzed by
The Daily Telegraph in November 2008 Vorderman herself responded crisply with:
"The secured loans market was criticised and it was pertinent to pick me out, because I was a face. I advertised FirstPlus for 10 years. We had something like £1.5billion out on loan and until a matter of months ago there were no repossessions. When that programme [BBC's Real Story] was made, [there were] no repossessions. Did they say that? Funnily enough, no."
Commercial ventures
Vorderman also expanded her business ventures launching a number of sudoku products. In March 2007 she launched a brain training game called
Carol Vorderman's Mind Aerobics together with BSkyB. Also in 2007, she released a video game for PlayStation 2 in the United States entitled
Carol Vorderman's Sudoku.
In the autumn of 2008, soon after she completed her final regular
Countdown show, Vorderman announced a new commercial venture in her own property development and sales company that would specialise in overseas holiday and retirement homes within the Caribbean, the Bahamas and Spain. Called Carol Vorderman's Overseas Homes Ltd 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 international financial downturn the venture proved short-lived and during March 2009 Vorderman publicly withdrew her name from the firm, which suspended trading soon after.
On 2 March 2010 Vorderman publicly launched her new commercial venture of an online mathematics coaching system for 4 - 12 year old children under the name of the MathsFactor.
