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When Carol Vorderman was very publicly and callously forced out of the role she loved on Countdown last year, having to film her final 60 shows with as much dignity as she could muster, it appeared to be a bitter blow to a woman who had brought so much joy to millions.
But now, nearly two months after her final appearance, she says that far from wallowing in self-pity and resentment, she has been counting her blessings.
‘It was hard at the time, because I loved the show and it had been part of my life for 26 years. But I’m never one to sit around saying: “Poor old me.” I’ve moved on and Countdown is now in the past,’ she says.
‘Over the past ten years or so, it has been difficult trying to juggle my work with raising my two children as a single mother
But now I’m not travelling as much, so I can be at home more, being a mum, instead of standing in front of the camera late in the evening 200 miles away.
‘For the first time in years, I’ve got some routine to my life. The school run, the sleepovers at weekends and trips with the children to the cinema. It’s a happiness which I’ve never found on planet celebrity.
‘Katie is now 16, and she and Cameron [who is 11] have never disguised their delight at me leaving Countdown. It’s as if they’ve got Mum back and we have such a laugh.’
As the daughter of a single mother herself, Carol recalls how her own mother was too busy holding down four jobs to help her youngest daughter with homework.
Which is why Carol, who was raised on free school meals, shared a bed with her mum until the age of nine and dressed in hand-me-downs from neighbours, is so passionate about her new role as a mentor for the millions of children who are failing to leave school with passes in GCSE Maths.
She has been unveiled as David Cameron’s new maths tsar, and it’s a job she is taking very seriously indeed, because she is only too aware that her life story could so easily have been different. She points out one particular statistic among the thousands she has been compiling over the past few weeks, and reads it out defiantly.
‘Normally, one in six children will get an A or A for Maths GCSE. But among the children on free school meals, that figure falls to one in 23, and just one in 100 for A s.
‘These children are 13 times more likely to fail maths than to gain a good grade, and they are being let down as a result. It isn’t just the children on the poverty line.
‘Under Labour, 3.5million children have left school without a GCSE grade C or higher in Maths. It’s because of my own background that I’m so ambitious for the children in our country. We came 24th, behind countries like Estonia, Czech Republic and Slovenia, in a maths comparison test a couple of years ago.