Rachel Riley achieved instant celebrity status as the replacement for ever popular Carol Vorderman as the resident arithmetician on Channel 4’s Countdown and has already achieved 3150 episodes 2009-23 (filmed in Salford, Manchester), and has achieved more with 148 episodes in the same role on the comedic 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown 2012-23; she has also co-presented The Gadget Show on Channel 5 (2013-14) and It’s Not Rocket Science on ITV 2016, having a strong motivation to popularise mathematics. We missed a while ago her 35th birthday. She was born in Rochford, Essex and raised in the Thorpe Bay area of Southend-on-Sea; educated at independent Thorpe Hall School and earned four As at Southend High School for Girls, then master’s degree in Applied Maths at Oriel College, Oxford University; she considered a career in the financial sector and worked for a time at Deutsche Bank in the City of London, but then applied for Countdown. She still lived in Thorpe Bay until 2014. She is now married to Pasha Kovalev (married in Las Vegas) whom she met and partnered on Strictly Come Dancing 2013 (they were eliminated in week 6) and they now have two children. She is not afraid to enter political debate and campaigns from their home in London from 2016:- she organised a petition to oppose the Pink Floyd petition to block Israel hosting Eurovision due to the ongoing conflict in Palestine, promoting a “spirit of togetherness”; she was awarded an MBE in the King’s Honours list 2023 for services to holocaust education, which also followed campaigns she led, including against Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour for anti-Semitism, motivated although an atheist by ancestors being Jewish immigrants from Tsarist Russian pogroms and as a result of which she has suffered massive online abuse. She also makes regular TV appearances on many shows as a celebrity, and is a keen supporter of Manchester United (her father being originally from Salford) and has presented on MUTV; for her 1000th Countdown she was presented with a signed team shirt by Ryan Giggs, and Man Utd was her specialist subject on Celebrity Mastermind 2012. We believe she is worthy of a match in her honour and hope you accept – if the numbers or ratings do not suit, then please make contact.
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