#YOUTH GROUP COUNTDOWNS SERIES#

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). In her spare time, she was briefly a backing singer with friend Lindsay Forrest in the Leeds-based pop group Dawn Chorus and the Blue Tits, fronted by radio DJ Liz Kershaw during the early 1980s. Vorderman initially found employment as a junior civil engineer at Dinorwig Power Station in Llanberis, Wales, and later as a graduate management trainee in Leeds. Her great-grandfather Adolphe Vorderman played a key role in the discovery of vitamins. He died while the programme was being filmed. It was only then that she discovered that her father had been an active member of the Dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation. 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?). She left with a third-class degree, a result which she has described as having been 'disappointing'. In 1978, aged 17, she went to read engineering at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Vorderman was educated at Blessed Edward Jones Catholic High School in nearby Rhyl. Vorderman's father remarried his wife died in the early 1990s. In 1970, her mother married Italian Armido Rizzi. Vorderman did not see her father again until she was 42. 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 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). She has also worked as a newspaper columnist and nominal author of educational and diet books. 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. Since 2022, she has been a news reviewer for This Morning. Vorderman was a presenter of ITV's Loose Women from 2011 until 2014. She has appeared on reality television shows including Strictly Come Dancing (2004), I'm a Celebrity.Get Me Out of Here! (2016) and The Great British Bake Off (2020), which she won.

While appearing on Countdown, Vorderman began presenting other television shows for various broadcasters including Better Homes (1991–2003) and The Pride of Britain Awards (1999–present) for ITV, as well as guest hosting shows such as Have I Got News for You (2004–2006) The Sunday Night Project (2006), and Lorraine (2011, 2018–2019, 2022). Her career began in 1982 when she joined the Channel 4 game show Countdown, appearing 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. Carol Jean Vorderman, MBE HonFIET (born 24 December 1960) is a British broadcaster, media personality and author.

Youth group countdowns