Carol Vorderman: My ‘facelift’ became folklore! Can women have beauty and brains?
Happy Place
Fearne Cotton
4.7 • 15.6K Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2026
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s an age-old question: can women have both brains and beauty? (Spoiler: obviously yes!) Broadcaster Carol Vorderman says the more people comment on her body... the more thigh high boots and tight skirts she’ll wear!
In this chat with Fearne, Carol charts her early life, from her family running away with the circus, to living out of a car, to being one of the first girls to read engineering at Cambridge University. She also reveals who wrote her first application to Countdown back in the day... because it wasn’t her!
Carol is very politically active, and explains why everything about our lives is political. Care about the pressure put on kids and parents by schools? Where your taxes go? Women’s bodily autonomy? It’s more important than ever, she says, to both use your vote, and live with hope.
What can we learn from Carol about making the best of what we’ve been given? And why do we all have a responsibility to stand up for what we believe in?
You can watch Carol on Celebrity Quizzing on Channel 5.
If you liked this episode of Happy Place, you might also like:
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Happy Place with me, Fern Cotton. |
| 0:04.8 | This is the show that gives you the confidence to be your brilliant, multifaceted self. |
| 0:10.2 | Today, I'm chatting to Carol Vorderman. |
| 0:14.0 | Year 2000, I went to the BAFTAs and I wore a short blue dress. |
| 0:19.6 | It was all over the front pages next day. |
| 0:22.4 | And then the BBC made a big programme about it. |
| 0:25.1 | It was then in the paper. |
| 0:26.3 | And the question was, should a woman, age 39, wear a dress above the knee? |
| 0:31.0 | So then it became carols this, carols that. |
| 0:35.0 | I should have sued. |
| 0:36.2 | And that was the error because it became folklore. |
| 0:39.1 | Right. I've wanted this chat to happen for a long time. I've just been on a book tour for my book |
| 0:44.7 | likeable, which, you know, it's always an interesting thing going on a book tour. You actually get to |
| 0:50.0 | talk to people and see what they think about that subject matter and the notion of trying to be |
| 0:56.2 | likable to everybody is something that still greatly interests me and something that I want to |
| 1:01.4 | personally challenge and whilst I was writing this book I was thinking about women who I think |
| 1:08.2 | have broken the mould and don't care so much whether they're liked or disliked |
| 1:12.1 | and don't play by the rules. And I say the word rules with inverted commas because they're not |
| 1:17.6 | real, they're bullshit, but the ones that we also dutifully follow to be a woman who doesn't |
| 1:24.2 | cause a scene or make a fast, etc. And one of the people I wrote about in the book |
| 1:29.0 | was Carol Vorderman. Because to me, she is the epitome of someone that just does life her way |
| 1:36.4 | and also breaks the mould. She has the biggest IQ. She's done so much for education in the UK and continues to get people curious about |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Fearne Cotton, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Fearne Cotton and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.