So, Carol Vorderman and the BBC have parted ways. With the presenter leaving her Radio Wales show this week, the corporation saw its highest-profile departure since it introduced new social media rules, which attempt to stop its high-profile names from expressing strong opinions on party politics.
The rules didn’t do much to deter Vorderman. Like other familiar faces, the presenter hasn’t held back from using her huge platform to express her views. Her recent posts to her 897.8K followers on X (formerly Twitter) have included claiming that the current Conservative Party “needs to be utterly dismantled at the next election” and that she wants to stop the “vile government clinging onto power for a day longer”.
Earlier in the year, meanwhile, she called the Government “a lying bunch of greedy, corrupt, destructive, hateful, divisive, gaslighting crooks”. You can see why the BBC’s big cheeses were reaching for their smelling salts.
After Vorderman deliberately breached the new, stricter restrictions, she had to go. She explained: “I’ve ultimately found that I’m not prepared to lose my voice on social media, change who I am, or lose the ability to express the strong beliefs I hold about the political turmoil this country finds itself in…
“Consequently, I have now breached the new guidelines and BBC Wales management have decided I must leave. We each must make our decisions.”
For many people, Vorderman is a one-woman opposition to the current government, but in fact she has been tireless in calling out politicians from all sides for laziness, entitlement and alleged corruption.
We could chew all day on why she has received different treatment from some of the BBC’s other bright stars – is it the threat of an outspoken woman of a certain age (Vorderman is 62) versus the deference with which all TV industry chiefs treat male football icons? Or has she just gone further? (The BBC said her posts failed the “civility” test, rather than impartiality.)
Whatever the truth there, the facts are: Gary Lineker remains at the helm of Match of the Day, while Vorderman has left the building. Even if the new rules came into force after Lineker – who works for the corporation on a freelance basis and was suspended over tweets comparing the language used around migration to that in 30s Germany – that still seems emblematic of a wider double standard.
Such controversy may come as a surprise to those who, in their mind’s eye, still have Vorderman as the smiley boffin who first turned up on our screens in 1982 making effortless work of the numbers round in Countdown, a show she appeared on for the next 26 years. But even before she finally left in 2008, she had begun to carve a unique path in British showbusiness.
Over the past three decades, she has become increasingly glamorous, seemingly defying age and gravity to earn regular Rear of the Year plaudits and lucrative brand endorsements with a preternaturally healthy figure she has no hesitation in sharing through almost daily selfies with her almost half a million Instagram followers. And she has covered conventional presenter territory, becoming a stalwart of TV panels and reality shows.
But that’s just the glittery stuff. Meanwhile, she has put her name to dozens of educational books, and in 2010 launched an online mathematics coaching system for school-age children – a service she made free to schoolchildren during lockdown.
Some say she should keep quiet, that she’s another celebrity looking for attention. But it would have been far easier for her to do just that, and keep her job. Instead, she’s made her choice, and it is to use her platform to speak out.
A woman who is sexy, smart and now unarguably honourable – no wonder lots of people don’t like her. Even in this day and age, it’s a terrifying combination.
Vorderman put her best foot forward this week, telling us, “Another interesting chapter begins”. And I have no doubt about that. She even has a pilot’s licence (just like Angelina Jolie, another woman who inspires and terrifies in equal measure).
In the air and on the ground, Carol Vorderman clearly won’t let herself be constrained and, now she is off the BBC leash, the world is even more her oyster.
We should all fasten our seatbelts.