Carol Vorderman

 Carol Jean Vorderman, MBE HonFIET (born 24 December 1960) is an English born Welsh media personality, best known for co-hosting the game show Countdown for 26 years from 1982 until 2008, as a newspaper columnist and nominal author of educational and diet books, and hosting the annual Pride of Britain awards. She has written books on detox diets.Vorderman's career began in 1982 when she joined Channel 4 game show Countdown. She appeared on the show 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 other shows for various broadcasters including Better Homes and The Pride of Britain Awards for ITV, as well as guest hosting shows such as Have I Got News for You, The Sunday Night Project and Lorraine.Vorderman was a presenter of ITV's Loose Women from 2011 until 2014. Vorderman was born in Bedford, Bedfordshire, the youngest of three children of Dutch father, Anton Vorderman (1920-2007), and a Welsh mother, Edwina Jean Davies (1928-2017).Her parents separated three weeks after her birth, and her mother took the family back to her home town of Prestatyn, Denbighshire, North Wales, where Vorderman and her siblings, Anton and Trixie, grew up in a one-parent household. Vorderman did not see her father again until she was 42. In 1970, her mother married Italian Armido Rizzi. The couple separated ten years later. Vorderman's father remarried; his wife died in the early 1990s.