Can Carol Vorderman save Britain?

Carol Vorderman loves a scrap. Cannot get enough. In the last two years, the former numbers lady from Countdown and two-time winner of Rear of the Year has discovered that whenever she has a pop at the Tories online – which she does with increasing frequency – her replies and retweets go through the roof. Speaking about it now in a London hotel room, Carol can barely conceal her glee.

“I’ve always been a bit of a mischief maker,” she says. Her tone is inviting, conspiratorial, lightly camp in a way that her mannerisms seem to italicise what she’s saying. ​“The right-wingers, I love winding them up online. You think, ​‘Yeah. Let’s have a go here.’”

This is the mindset with which she confronts both her enemies in the upper ranks of the Tory party and the sexism she has faced throughout her career, from her television debut on Countdown in 1982 through to the present day. She got the gig after her mother applied on her behalf and, over the next quarter-century, the show elevated Carol to Nation’s Sweetheart status. Since then, the 63-year-old has remained a staple on British TV, presenting Loose Women and appearing on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here in 2016.

But being a woman in the spotlight for that long has not come without its challenges. When I mentioned to a friend that I was going to interview Carol, they told me that whenever she appeared on TV in the ​’90s, her father would exclaim, ​“Phwoar! Look at the brains on her.” I expect her to be exasperated when I mention this, or at least prompted to reveal some of the misogyny she must have encountered over the last forty years. But the sexist comment barely seems to register. She blinks and tells me instead about her ability to weather the vagaries of public life.

Carol’s appetite for a set-to and her gladiatorial sense of humour have helped fend off criticism through the years. This, she tells me, goes right back to her upbringing in Prestatyn, Wales, where she worked on building sites as a teenager in the ​’70s and regularly got the ferry across the River Mersey to visit Liverpool and Manchester. ​“When I was 15, in Manchester in the ​’70s, there were hundreds of clubs, many of them working men’s clubs, where there was live music and acts,” she says. ​“That’s who I am. And our humour, you know, is to slag each other off. We find it hilarious, especially because in the south east it doesn’t ride so well when you go, ​‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, look at that shirt on him.’”

Nowadays, Carol’s not so shy about flaunting that side of her personality (although she bristles slightly when asked if she was more given to playing the game in the past: ​“If you knew me, I don’t play a game”). In her new book Now What? On a mission to fix Broken Britain, Carol writes mostly about politics, but also the freedom that comes from being an older woman. ​“You get to your mid-sixties, as I am, and you’re like, ​‘Oh, I don’t give a shit,’” she says. ​“I have nothing to apologise for. What are you going to say to ​“You’re old”? Isn’t it great being able to not die young! I’m sorry I could not escape the space-time continuum. But I don’t really think about it, to be honest.”

Instead, Carol has been thinking about her book, which she has been furiously (in both senses) writing since the election. The mission of Why Now? is to convert ordinary people to politics and bring about what she believes is a desperately-needed change to the system: getting more people to vote and making sure our representatives are held accountable. She’s happy with how things are going so far. ​“Step one was to eviscerate the Tories and we’ve done that,” she beams. ​“Step two is to put pressure on the government so they will adopt a number of codes of conduct. That costs nothing, does it?”

In the book, Carol outlines a number of strategies to improve politics, some perhaps more realistic than others, such as implementing a ​“duty of candour” to ensure ​“public sector workers have a responsibility to tell the truth or face criminal prosecution”, in order to prevent unethical behaviour and cover-ups such as the Post Office scandal.

Isn’t some of this stuff a bit utopian? Carol shakes her head, impassioned. ​“If somebody doesn’t start it, it’s never going to happen, is it?” She then proceeds to back up this anything-is-possible attitude with a long, rather rousing reply through the prism of her life: her belief that, after seeing the moon landing on TV at the age of eight, she needed to be an astronaut, which in turn led a young Carol to resolve that she, a council house girl on free school meals, could go to Cambridge, where she eventually studied engineering from the age of 17.

Later, on my own, I find myself uncertain again about Carol’s crusading optimism. But by God, it’s invigorating in person. Her account of her life is touching, and she is astute in the way she links her success to political initiatives, such as the right to a council home, access to education for all (she headed a taskforce on the subject for David Cameron’s Tory party in 2009) and Right to Buy. Perhaps it’s this faith in the system’s ability to work for ordinary people that has fuelled her rage at Tory duplicity. ​“We’ve got 15 million people who volunteer and give their time freely to help other people,” she says, drawing on her experience as presenter of the Pride of Britain awards. ​“The thought that [the government] could lie and rob from us when people thought that we were all in it together. That’s what I can’t get over.”

Even though she’s publicly spoken about it many times – on the This Morning sofa, X and her own Instagram account – I can still hear her anger. ​“Yeah, I am furious about it,” she says. ​“It’s unbelievable, it is, and I’m not giving up on it either.” By this she means the Tory ​“VIP lane” scandal, through which providers such as former Conservative peer Michelle Mone could earn millions for failed contracts to supply PPE during Covid. Carol met Michelle on Celebrity Apprentice in late 2008, and it was her personal animus towards the now Baroness that initially riled her into posting.

Does she have any misgivings about our new Labour government? She bats the idea away: ​“Misgivings? No. But trust in government itself, not just the Tories… I mean the Tories are the pits, but Labour has to be good too, in order for all of us not to face hell in [the next general election in] 2029.” And Carol believes she can help steer that change. ​“We have to come together, that’s what I have learned in the past two years, and it is something I will be a part of. I can’t tell you what the cunning plan is.” True to form, in the last few days she has popped up in the press once more, holding the government to account over its cuts to winter fuel payments for pensioners.

I’m keen to steer her away from politics for a second, so we can discuss her most surprising reinvention: Carol Vorderman, poly queen. Indeed, last year Carol made a splash by revealing (on Michelle Visage’s podcast, no less) that she has a number of casual male ​“friends”, instead of one husband or partner. At the time, she had five men on her roster, but there are now only three, she tells me with mock sadness. What happened? ​“I’ve been busy, OK!” Dwindling romantic partners aside, she’s still baffled by the brouhaha caused by her dating preferences. ​“I’m happy, nobody’s harmed, everybody’s single. What’s the big deal?” she says. ​“I’m not financially dependent or socially dependent on a man – and if someone has a problem with a woman being equal to a man, they have the problem, not me.”

What Carol says is clearly important to her, whether she’s taking down Tories or highlighting the lack of working-class representation in British media, which she recently addressed in a speech on the future of television for the Alternative MacTaggart Lecture at Edinburgh TV Festival.

But equally significant to what Carol says is the way she says it. Her startling charisma; her every person charm and frankness, combining seriousness of purpose with a kind of pleasing bustle. She has a personal manner that is, how can I put this, flirtation-adjacent. Her disarming forthrightness – touches of my arm for emphasis, little grace notes of flattery (“you’re too young to know this, but…”) – seem to participate in an operation of seduction, despite the fact that I’m a very gay man and Carol likely has an acutely fine-tuned gaydar. All this, in the figure of someone I have the uncanny feeling of having known for decades. It gives me a sense of how formidable a player Carol can now be, particularly when embracing her more belligerent side.

So, let’s test her limits. What does she think of Rachel Riley? ​“I don’t really follow what she says, I think it’s about Israel and Gaza? Everyone has their own life…” What’s 17 times 42? ​“Oh, I’ve no idea. Don’t suddenly throw maths questions at me!”

Lastly, in Now What?, Carol reveals she received an ​“admiring” message from Michael Gove when she announced she had all those lovers. What did it say? She bellows with laughter. ​“I’m not saying.” I beg her to show me the text. ​“No.” I order her to show me the text. She will not budge. That conspiratorial tone again: ​“I quite liked putting some gossipy bits in there though. Bit of stirring. Stir, stir, stir.” And Carol Vorderman throws back her head and shouts with laughter.

Now What? On A Mission To Fix Broken Britain is published by Headline on 12^th September. Carol will discuss the book at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall on 21^st September. Grab yourself a ticket at southbankCentre​.co​.uk