Carol Vorderman reveals Chris Moyles was her work experience boy

8 January 2023, 16:00

Carol Vorderman and Chris Moyles go way back. Picture: 1. Radio X 2. Avalon/Getty Images 3. Radio X

By Radio X

The former Countdown star revealed that she gave a very young Chris Moyles one of his first work experience jobs.

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Carol Vorderman gave Chris Moyles his first work experience job.

The former Countdown star visited Radio X to talk about her new podcast, Perfect 10, and talk turned to her early history with the DJ and I'm A Celeb star.

She told Toby Tarrant: "So the first ever quiz show obviously I did was Countdown back in 1982 and where did we record Countdown? In Leeds. In Yorkshire television. Where is Chris Moyles from? Leeds.

"Going back now, 1982. Long, long time ago. A year later next door was called Radio Aire [...] I had a kids request show. Every Saturday I'd go in and in those days we had records. Actual records that we played. We'd line everything up and children would send in their requests.

"Anyway, I was doing that and then one day I had a letter from a young boy saying, [puts on Leeds accent] 'Hello, I want to be on radio one day. Can I come into the studio?'"

She went on: "So I invited this young boy, who came in with his mum Vera and it was Chris. And he used to come in every Saturday to help me get the records out of the music library. That was his job."

"He was my helper. He was this little freckly, quiet, shy boy," she added, joking: "What ever happened?"

Carol Vorderman's new podcast, Perfect 10 with Carol Vorderman, starts on Monday 9th December.

The entrepreneur, philanthropist and maths whizz also happened to visit Radio X the day after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced his plans to make maths compulsory for students until the age of 18 and she had a few thoughts on the topic.

"So obviously I'm a big fan of maths,' she told Radio X. "I have an online maths school. I've taught a million children online over the last 12 years. It's my absolute passion. I give bursaries to kids from a similar background to me to go study maths at uni. Blah. This is my thing.

"And I would say, why, oh why, oh why? Stop looking at the age. Great if people want to study to age 18, but the problems lie much earlier."

Carol Vorderman and Chris Moyles go way back

She went on: "So there are very many issues. Tech isn't used enough. Primary school teachers, if they have a fear, it's of maths, because most of them - almost all - gave up maths at 16.

"So that's what we've kind of come from and I have said and recommended that the GCSE changes so we have two different kinds.

"One is about practical numeracy. Your tax returns, your mortgages and how to calculate credit, whatever it is. Your car, what is volume? What is all those different things. And you forget trigonometry. Just chuck it out..."

She added: "Can we just stop pretending and do something practical? If you're going to do something practical. Look at that. Age 14. Create something. Stop teaching to the test. Use tech a lot more, because it works and that's what I would say".