Vorderman was born in Bedford to a Dutch father and Welsh mother. Her parents broke up three weeks after her birth, and her mother took the family back to her home town of Prestatyn, North Wales, where Vorderman and siblings grew up in a lone parent household. Their mother remarried in 1970 to an Italian national. Vorderman attended the Roman Catholic comprehensive Blessed Edward Jones High School Read more...

Vorderman's mother noticed a newspaper advertisement asking for a woman with good mathematical skills to appear as co-host on a quiz show for the fledgling fourth terrestrial channel and submitted an application on behalf of her daughter. Thus, at the age of 21, Vorderman made her name on Countdown with Richard Whiteley from the show's inception in 1982 until Whiteley's death in June 2005. In October Read more...

Vorderman has had newspaper columns in The Daily Telegraph, and in the Daily Mirror on Internet topics. She has written books on Detox diets. Her No 1 Bestseller was Detox For Life, produced in collaboration with Ko Chohan and Anita Bean and published by Virgin Books, which sold over a million copies. She is also a self-described sudoku addict since April 2005 when she wrestled a book of the puzzles Read more...