Carol Vorderman has something to say about the state of the nation. So much, in fact, that she’s channelled her fury into a new book, which she’ll be discussing at Clifton LitFest on 15 November. Simon Horsford caught up with her for a frank and honest chat about the journey into politics, and why she loves living in Bristol
I’ve always been a fighter,” says Carol Vorderman, the former Countdown maths whizz. These combative instincts became more apparent during the past of couple of years, when she proved to be a surprisingly effective thorn in the side of the Conservative Party via her numerous tweets eviscerating its 14 turbulent years in office. She mentions this when I ask how she has coped with the many, sometimes vicious, brickbats thrown at her in print and online because of her stance, “I won’t be bullied,” she declares, “I’ve had 30 years of this, this is not my first rodeo, so you can say what you like, mate. I’m here.” And her legions of supporters (she has more than 988,000 followers on X and over 620,000 on Instagram) appear to far outweigh the naysayers.
Talking over the phone from her PR office in London, Vorderman, who lives in Bristol, admits it’s quite a change of gear from the days of Countdown, presenting Tomorrow’s World and Loose Women and appearing on the likes of Have I Got News For You. But she adds, “believe me, it wasn’t planned. I think when you’re in your sixties, I will be 64 in December, you get to a point in life when, and David Bowie said it brilliantly, ‘ageing is a process by which you become the person you always should have been’, and I absolutely agree.”
It’s a point she reiterates in her recently published book Now What?, which takes the form of a politically-skewed diary of the past two years and a “plan for change” (from electoral reform to having the House of Commons function outside of London for part of the year), but also details her own life and upbringing – “growing up in poverty” – and how she got to where she is now.
It also reiterates her belief that “an older woman gets her power when she doesn’t care what others think of her anymore… becoming comfortable in her behaviour and reasons for raising the roof.”
The countdown to politics
In many ways Vorderman could be viewed as a very modern phenomenon in her morphing from TV celebrity to social media, anti-corruption firebrand (as the novelist Jonathan Coe put it). Her stance prompted the Glasgow Herald to call her the “real leader of the opposition”, while even the Daily Mail suggested she was a “surprise Leftie poster girl”. So what was it that triggered the switch – was there a flashpoint, or was it more of a slow-burning frustration?
“Well, I have kind of tinkered around the edges of politics for decades, particularly to do with safety of children online and maths” – (in 2001, David Blunkett appointed her to a Labour taskforce that helped form the world’s first law to make grooming a child online illegal; six years later she chaired a maths panel for David Cameron to improve teaching in schools. In 2010 she also set up the Maths Factor, an engaging maths homework site for 4- to 11-year-olds).
Her current engagement with politics “was slow-burning for a year or so, but it was really after first lockdown. The things still to this day and probably to the day I die that were impossible to comprehend were ‘partygate’ and the ‘PPE VIP lane’. When everyone was trying to help everyone else and we were told we were ‘all in it together’, and for the first time in my lifetime people were being locked in their houses, to learn that not only were we lied to and gaslit, but that many Tories were profiteering from that time and still are today… I think a number of them should be behind bars.”
Keyboard rebel on a mission
Her first political tweet targeted the Conservative peer Baroness Michelle Mone about revelations that she had lobbied for PPE contracts – but others to feel her sting included Rishi Sunak, Suella Braverman, Nadhim Zahawi and, infamously, a spat with the former veterans’ minister Johnny Mercer and his wife, but in the main it was the Tory party as whole that she went for, calling them at one point, “a lying bunch of greedy, corrupt, destructive, hateful, divisive, gaslighting crooks”.
Vorderman is as frank and honest in conversation as she is in her book, but what comes across in both is an almost crusading fervour and an anger at the way she believes “everything is on its knees” in Britain and where the blame lies – she’s a keyboard rebel on a mission. It’s a side of her personality markedly different from the one portrayed back in the eighties as the “vital statistician” on Channel 4’s Countdown (a phrase you wouldn’t get away with now). But she admits: “I’ve always had the devil in me, it just normally comes out at parties! I’m also one of those people who is hyper-focused and I’m a workaholic, boots in and everything. I think it’s my nature.”
Vorderman left her BBC Radio Wales show last year over the corporation’s new social media guidelines, and then went on to present a Sunday afternoon slot on LBC, which gave her far more freedom. The phone-in offered the chance to call out the topics of the day, among them the missteps (and successes) of the current government. Vorderman recently made the decision to leave her LBC show, in mid October, after ‘burning out’ due to her seven-day work week schedule.
So the energy that she has channelled into this political foray is par for the course. Ambition and a desire to succeed are clearly part of her DNA too and perhaps her drive comes from her childhood, which she talks about eloquently in the book, with her hard-working mother bringing up three children, sometimes as a single parent, while Vorderman’s “cleverness” saw her jump from being a “free school meals kid” at a North Wales comprehensive to gaining a place at Cambridge University studying engineering.
Social media: it’s a bit ‘Wild West’
One particular strand of the book examines how politics influences so many aspects of our lives, from health to education and work, and yet she bemoans the fact that there remains a huge detachment between the public and those who govern – as Vorderman points out, the turnout for the election in July of 59.9% was the second lowest since 1918.
“It’s like the lifeblood of our country has been sucked out by the Tories over 14 years.”
She continues: “We have more news stations and more news channels than ever before and yet the disconnect grows.” In a recent Alternative McTaggart lecture in Edinburgh, Vorderman suggested that for the first time a quarter of people in the UK are not watching broadcast television on a weekly basis. “Social media – no longer the new kid, more like the badly behaved uncle, has changed our society and its rules. What it gives everyone… the opportunity to do, is to see and hear views they recognise, in language they recognise.”
But what about the negative and extremist side of the likes of X? Surely that makes everything more fragmented? “I think social media as with all new technology can be good or bad and it’s a bit Wild West at the moment,” Vorderman admits, “there [also] shouldn’t be the level of online abuse but there is, particularly for women. I’ll be targeting the misogynists next.”
But is a change in political engagement possible? “People started saying nothing will change, that they will always get away with it,” says Vorderman, “but I thought ‘No, together we are stronger’. I came across ‘StopTheTories’ [a tactical voting website] and joined a band of voluntary musketeers. Tactical voting became a big thing, with people voting Lib Dem or Green where suitable.”
The result, she suggests, is that “Labour has been loaned millions of votes, tactical votes, and they’ve got to do a damn good job as the Tories have left this country in an absolute state. But can they pull it out of the bag? I don’t know.”
Vorderman has said in the past that she is centrist and isn’t politically active locally in Bristol, although admits, “I suppose on a council level I could be an independent if anyone wanted to vote for me, but I think we’ve got some good councillors and that’s why Carla [Denyer, the Green Party MP for Bristol Central] did so well because the councillors have done well for us, they are very active and she benefited from that because we were already pleased with one level of local government.”
Despite describing herself as a northerner – she was brought up around Prestatyn and Rhyl in north Wales, “the holiday strip” for the north-west, Vorderman is happily settled in Bristol, where she has been for “around 17/18 years.”
“I love it because it’s chilled and isn’t posh and I’m not posh, although it has some beautiful buildings and there are some lovely parts like Clifton and around the harbour now. I love that there are so many students, who make me laugh and there is a passion there.” Aside from walking around the city, Mercy Mercy Mercy is a favoured café destination in Clifton, while the Everyman cinema is another haunt, which she goes to with her son Cameron (she also has a daughter, Katie, a research scientist).
So, as Vorderman claims to be a bit of a party animal, I ask who would she invite to a fantasy dinner party?
“My friend [the actress] Sally Lindsay, Nye Bevan, a definite, [she describes him in her book as ‘a man born into poverty in the 1800s and still affecting our lives today’], Lord Denning, from a massive Welsh mining family, he became Master of the Rolls and was very out there, very pro women, he was amazing and proper working class, and Betty Boothroyd [the first female Speaker of the Commons]. Then [the comedian/actor] Robin Williams, and I’d have Elvis, Tom Jones and David Bowie.”
It would, I imagine, be quite a rowdy night. Finally, I wonder if it took courage to put her head above the parapet? She laughs and says, “I don’t know, some people would just call me a “gobsh*te”. n
Now What? On a Mission to Fix Broken Britain is out now. Carol Vorderman will discuss the book at Clifton LitFest 2024 on November 15 at Christ Church, Clifton; for more info on the event, visit foccal.com/litfest
