GRAZIA INTERVIEW
The national treasure has turned her razor sharp brain to bringing down the Government – and she’s challenging anyone who says a woman can’t be sexy and clever. Eleanor Mills meets Carol Vorderman
THE LAST time I interviewed a ‘queenager’ (a midlife queen) in leather trousers it was Theresa May in Downing Street – and all hell broke loose (hello ‘Trousergate’).
Today it is Carol Vorderman, national treasure and ex-Countdown pin-up, who sashays into the Bloomsbury Hotel in skintight leather strides, her hour-glass curves accessorised with a wasp-waisted patent belt, high-heeled black boots and glittery sweater. Last month, Vorderman, 63, was named as one of the people viewers of BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg show would most like to see as Prime Minister… is today’s style homage to our former PM an indication that she would like the gig?
‘No,’ Vorderman says firmly. ‘I definitely don’t want to be an MP. But I am loving being a channel for a million people who feel like they have no voice. Politics has been corrupted since Boris Johnson was in power; […] MPs need to be held to account. Look for the pattern and follow the money!’
In the last 15 months, Vorderman has used her radio show on Sundays at LBC and her social media to become a thorn in the side of Rishi Sunak’s Government. ‘Nothing changes in this life unless we push for it. I love bringing information into a new domain, I read accounts in Companies House, I scour trusted sources and I bring it to a public who would never usually see it. In my sixties I feel I have finally found my voice and my true purpose.’
She sits back and stirs three lumps of brown sugar into her latte, confiding, ‘I love being this age. I just don’t give a crap. I mean, even that Shaun Bailey nonsense – I just say, “How dare you!” on behalf of women everywhere.’
Ah, #sexistshaun, as she dubbed the ex-Tory London Mayor wannabe, now Baron Bailey of Paddington, who dared to say of Vorderman, ‘She’s a serious political commentator and then if you look at her Instagram it’s all pictures of her bum and her boobs. So what is it here? She can’t be both.’
Why not? Why can’t a woman post pictures of herself looking attractive and have a brain? It’s Neanderthal thinking. Vorderman laughs, telling me, ‘It’s only certain bits of the media who say women can’t be attractive and clever. Don’t conflate that media view with the public. The public don’t have a problem with women being sexy and clever, they have wives and daughters and mothers. We have a generation of younger men who feel equal to women, who love it that their girlfriends do well… they expect their girlfriends and partners to have good jobs and look good. I called Shaun out because
