Carol Vorderman hated BBC show she would never do | UK News

TV presenter Carol Vorderman has been one of the most recognisable faces on British TV since she first appeared on Countdown in 1982. She popped up on every thing from Loose Women to Have I Got News for You.

Alongside her more critical factual reporting for reveals such as Tomorrow’s World, Carol also performed the rounds of a quantity of top-raced celeb actuality reveals, such as Strictly Come Dancing, I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! and The Great Celebrity Bake-Off.

Carol told actress Sally Lindsay on her “A Night In” podcast that they weren’t all blissful experiences: “I did Strictly in the second series,” she said, “Clare Sweeney persuaded me to do it because she was in series one. And I hated it.”

Partnered with skilled dancer Paul eliminateick, Carol was eradicated from the BBC show fairly early in the competitors: “I won’t do that again,” she joked. “Not that they’d ever ask.”

Carol, who is as well-known for her forthright political beliefs as her eager mathematical thoughts, added that there are some reveals she would point-blank refuse to take into account: “I would never do Big Brother. I’d be cancelled before I set foot through the bloody door.”

Her expertise on the BBC’s flagship in style science show Tomorrow’s World is also one she wouldn’t need to repeat, she told Sally.

“I’d been on Countdown a long time and I’d been offered various bits and pieces,” Carol recalled. “I’d been doing bits and pieces …I had been doing a lot of educational shows and stuff about science because obviously that was my background.

“But then the BBC rang up my agent one day and they said, ‘we’d really like to talk to you – we’re thinking of changing all the presenters on Tomorrow’s World – because we’ve done a focus group and in our focus group we gave a list of 20 names and 80% of the people said ‘We want Carol Vorderman’.”

The job entailed just one day’s work a week, and Carol’s agent had negotiated a respectable fee, but there was one problem: “They despatched the contract through and it said that I used to be exclusive to the BBC and I could not do Countdown anymore.

“So I rang [my agent]. And I said ‘That’s never going to happen. I’m not giving Countdown up ever. That’s not going to happen’.” Eventually, though, the BBC agreed to compromise on Carol’s calls for and she began work on Tomorrow’s World.

Carol said: “We’re filming in Australia. Having a lovely time, but I got a phone call when I got back to the hotel saying ‘ring your agent’.”

It emerged that BBC executives had belatedly realised that she was been doing common adverts for cleaning soap powder long before she had began working for them: “Loads of arguments went on and then in the end they said ‘You’re sacked.’”

Carol had been working on a number of other tasks for the BBC, including a common column in Radio Times magazine, but she was dismissed from all of them in one fell swoop.

The sacking made front-page news: “So I fought back through the press,” Carol said. “I wrote articles saying ‘Hang on, this is just sexism. I’m sacked for doing an advert when Noel Edmonds is doing Noel’s Maxwell House coffee adverts and Terry Wogan, who was one of their biggest stars was doing British Gas.”

While Carol pushed back against the BBC’s choice, ultimately the argument died down and she went back to working on Countdown with her great buddy Richard Whitely. But a few months later, the BBC called again, to say that the viewing figures for Tomorrow’s World had declined dramatically after her departure.

She was requested to meet with the show’s editor, who begged her to rejoin the show – but on one condition: “He said the fatal words,” Carol recalled.” He said: ‘If you tell anyone that we’ve offering you your job back, we will deny it.’

“So I went ‘Fine.’ I rang my agent as soon as I came out of the meeting – it’s terrible, really – I said, John, keep stringing them along till a week or two before transmission and then tell them where to go. That’s what we did!”