Now, I know you couldn’t have escaped the big news that Carol Vorderman and Des O’Connor left Countdown… sometime this month. I mean, Des O’Connor is a legend, but Carol Vorderman has been on it for yonks.
If you don’t know, Countdown is a weekday programme on Channel 4 in the UK, and is a game show-type thing where the contestants (generally old people) make words out of 9 random letters, with the longest word earning whoever made it as many points as letters. There’s also a numbers game, where the contestants have to get closest to a random number given only six random numbers. Go YouTube it. 
But yeah. Since Vorderman is a machine, it’ll be hard to replace her. So who better to replace her than someone with a 2:1 in Maths?
Rachel Riley (left, obviously.) may not be as much to look at as Vorderman was (maybe because she’s actually wearing a whole dress…) but should fit the bill, after she was selected to be the co-host over a thousand or so other applicants. She was apparently pleased to have "The only cool Maths job" and to follow in the footsteps of the great Vorderman.
If only she wasn’t so shit at maths.
I don’t want to gloat or anything, but half the time I get the numbers game closer, or actually on the number generated and do better than the contestants. However audience members (again, generally old people) have been reporting that she’s been making simple maths errors. You’re not square rooting bloody negative numbers, dear, you’re adding 75 to 550.
Okay, okay, so I’m being a bit harsh. Anyone who’s seen me do maths know I screw up the obvious bits, like adding up wrong. Hence why I’m not working on Countdown. But if you’ve got a 2:1 at Oxford University, you’re sort of expected to not do that.
Oh, and the other new host, Jeff Stelling, is a bit of an off choice, too, isn’t he? I mean, he presents Sky Sports Soccer Saturday. I guess the criteria for the job was just "You must be getting on a bit, and laugh at really bad jokes". I hate the way Stelling talks, too. I don’t know what it is, maybe it’s just the constant random emphasis he puts on words. *shrug*
Maybe it’ll turn out alright. They turn up again late January, so make sure you’re tuned in…
Why the hell are you watching this?
Because Countdown is hardcore.
Nothing is more intense than a crucial Countdown conundrum…