Carol Vorderman

Carol Vorderman is a British television presenter. She first became famous on a game show called Countdown; her role on the show was to pick randomly-chosen letters and numbers for the contestants to play the games with, and also to provide a solution to the numbers game if the contestants were unable to do so. As a result of the latter duty, Vorderman became associated with mathematics in the British popular consciousness, becoming "the stupid person's clever person" (before that mantle was arguably taken by the flamboyant actor and dilettante Stephen Fry).

Clever positioning won Vorderman a series of other jobs such as presenting the technology show Tomorrow's World, presenting coverage of televised chess, and advertising products with faux-scientific health benefits such as a particular brand of margarine.

Vorderman's reputation for intelligence is not entirely undeserved, since she does have an engineering degree from Cambridge University. However, she has rarely had any special expertise in the subject matter of the more heavyweight programs she has been involved with, being chosen mainly to bring a superficial patina of nebulous intellectual credibility that plays well with mass audiences.