I may be in a minority, but I don’t mind Carol Vorderman. We’ve had the odd Twitter spat, but beyond me dubbing her the ‘Welsh windbag’, there’s been no hand-to-hand contact.
But I cannot help but feel, as she’s got older, probably due to her selling her £3million apartment overlooking Parliament and returning to Wales (how awful), it's been all downhill.
By hanging around with the people from her homeland, her politics have moved comfortably Left. Another less sympathetic analysis is that losing her Countdown job after 26 years, when the bosses wanted to cut her pay from £900K to £90K, has affected her mental health.
Going from Cameron’s best friend to getting the bullet from BBC Wales for being too much of a socialist firebrand is a decent journey. What surprises me today is that she can dish it out but is no longer prepared to take it.
She is now demanding an apology from Robert Kenyon, Reform’s Makerfield byelection candidate, for ‘’disgusting comments’’ he made about her on social media in the past.
The posts, which I have no doubt were offensive, were made when Kenyon was an ordinary member of the public plying his plumbing trade in Wigan and long before he had his sights set on politics.
As long as it was legally okay to my mind, he could say what he liked. Be as rude as you like. If you don’t want to be offended, don’t be rude to them.
Despite Kenyon deleting both his account and the tweets, his opponents have their own tech to find out what he said when he wasn’t a politician. And Ms Vorderman is not happy with what has been unearthed, accusing him of being a misogynist.
My experience is that nobody is happy on X unless being praised. Some of the stuff hurled at me is vile. But I’ve been in the free speech world all my life, and to be honest, I often laugh at the idea that a SKID (Skint Idle Dim Socialist) is getting worked up over something I’ve tweeted or said.
Carole Vorderman's attack on the Reform candidate has been a long time coming
|Getty Images
In her politically motivated attack on Kenyon, which I’m sure will be more help to his campaign than a hindrance, she says one very odd thing: ‘’I’m 65, I grew up in North Wales in abject poverty.’’
What has that got to do with anything? She’s had a charmed life. A clever girl, she went to Oxbridge, emerging with a maths degree, became very wealthy and very famous thanks to her TV role and some decades ago did what sixties Wilson minister Ray Gunter said when sacked: ‘’I’m going back to the folks whence I came.’’
I remember an old Private Eye cover with Gunter saying that and somebody else saying; Folk off.’’
Vorderman must have thought her thoughts about Kenyon would be damaging, but I don’t imagine she would be a popular figure in the Wigan area.
She has had, and continues to have, a very lucky life. More brains and more money than her neighbours, that’s for sure. I imagine the reason she doesn’t actually reveal Kenyon’s tweet is that she’s fearful people would agree with it.
That’s the problem. You’re upset, but the nation laughs. Being famous is both a curse and a joy. I’m surprised that at 65, she hasn’t learned that yet.
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