Carol Vorderman

Although now one of the best paid women on British television, Carol Vorderman and her sister and brother spent most of their childhood in freezing cold houses and without a father figure (he left when she was only three weeks old).

Carol studied engineering at Cambridge, and worked as a civil engineer.

An advertisement in a local newspaper, looking for someone with "brains and beauty", was spotted by Jean, Carol's mother. Jean applied for the job on Carol's behalf, and so Vorderman became the "Face with the Figures" on the letters and numbers quiz Countdown.

Since then, an ever-increasing stream of programmes followed, mostly of a computer or scientific bent.

Trivia

One of Carol's teachers wrote on a school report: "Carol has a masterly hold of mathematical computation, which should prove profitable in the future." Indeed it was.

She appeared in the video for that doesn't-get-played-much number one smash Mr Blobby by Mr Blobby.

In the mid-80s, she occasionally sang backing vocals in the group Dawn Chorus and the Blue Tits, though as far as we're aware she didn't appear on any of their recordings.

She was the subject of one edition of the BBC's family history series, "Who Do You Think You Are?"