c4countdown

Posted: **Sun Jul 11, 2010 4:43 pm**

I think Carol Vorderman is better.

Posted: **Sun Jul 11, 2010 4:55 pm**

Better at what?

Posted: **Sun Jul 11, 2010 5:34 pm**

Rachel doesn't appear on my junk mail — that's got to count for something.

Posted: **Sun Jul 11, 2010 6:00 pm**

Carol Vorderman.
Oops sorry I read it wrong, I thought it said who is bitter.

Posted: **Sun Jul 11, 2010 6:10 pm**

Funny. Votes currently 7-1 in Riley's favour. (I voted Riley). A lot of people I speak to claim Vorderman is better as they say Rachel misses quite a few and that they get them and they don't remember Carol missing any and if she did they were hard. This riles me somewhat (excuse the pun) as Rachel doesn't miss that many and those she does miss are quite tricky. In fact looking through the series 48 recaps, Carol actually missed quite a few that I managed to get. Do people somehow forget about these or are they brainwashed into thinking (thanks to the papers) that Rachel misses loads.

I had someone yesterday say Carol is better and I told them about the study someone did on here that was based on several shows and the percentage difficulty of solving each one and how you guys worked out that Rachel was slightly better. He said he was happy as he couldn't argue with statistics but it just seemed rich that he was adamant 5 minutes previously that Carol had no flaws when it came to the numbers game.

Posted: **Sun Jul 11, 2010 6:21 pm**

Kirk Bevins wrote:Funny. Votes currently 7-1 in Riley's favour. (I voted Riley). A lot of people I speak to claim Vorderman is better as they say Rachel misses quite a few and that they get them and they don't remember Carol missing any and if she did they were hard. This riles me somewhat (excuse the pun) as Rachel doesn't miss that many and those she does miss are quite tricky. In fact looking through the series 48 recaps, Carol actually missed quite a few that I managed to get. Do people somehow forget about these or are they brainwashed into thinking (thanks to the papers) that Rachel misses loads.

I had someone yesterday say Carol is better and I told them about the study someone did on here that was based on several shows and the percentage difficulty of solving each one and how you guys worked out that Rachel was slightly better. He said he was happy as he couldn't argue with statistics but it just seemed rich that he was adamant 5 minutes previously that Carol had no flaws when it came to the numbers game.

Posted: **Sun Jul 11, 2010 9:44 pm**

Still not sure what the question is about.

If it is "who is better at the numbers?" then I pick Rachel. By the end of Carol's run (admittedly not the fairest time to judge her) I could beat carol at the numbers roughly once a week. It definitely doesn't happen as often against Rachel and when I do beat her in the time, she almost always gets it in the ad break.

If we're talking about "who is the better television personality?" then that is a harder question. Rachel is certainly very good now, but she also has a brilliant host to play off. Whether she would be as effective alongside Des O'Connor is debatable. Again, it may be a tad unfair to judge Carol at the end of her tenure, but by then she had started to grate, especially with things like her fake bad singing and love of Red Arrows. I'll give this to Rachel too.

Posted: **Sun Jul 11, 2010 10:10 pm**

Carol is better at screeching right-wing diatribes and spurious nutrionalist pseudoscience, so I voted for her.

Posted: **Sun Jul 11, 2010 10:56 pm**

Charlie Reams wrote:spurious nutrionalist pseudoscience

Citation needed

Let me help...

Posted: **Sun Jul 11, 2010 11:39 pm**

Similar to what some others have said.

I used to beat Carol more frequently than I beat Rachel. Maybe I'm getting worse, but I don't think so.

Posted: **Mon Jul 12, 2010 7:02 am**

It's fun to Search for "Vorderman", and look through the oldest ones excluding recaps. Quite a few criticisms by people we don't hear from nowadays, and withering put-downs from . . . well, I'm sure you can guess.

Posted: **Mon Jul 12, 2010 8:54 am**

David Williams wrote:It's fun to Search for "Vorderman", and look through the oldest ones excluding recaps. Quite a few criticisms by people we don't hear from nowadays, and withering put-downs from . . . well, I'm sure you can guess.

Could you back up your sanctimony with some examples?

Posted: **Mon Jul 12, 2010 9:12 am**

David Williams wrote:It's fun to Search for "Vorderman", and look through the oldest ones excluding recaps. Quite a few criticisms by people we don't hear from nowadays, and withering put-downs from . . . well, I'm sure you can guess.

You mean... opinions can change?

Posted: **Mon Jul 12, 2010 10:12 am**

Questions -
who is Carol Vorderman?
more correctly, who was Carol Vorderman?
if the role was just to do with numbers would we not have someone totally diferent?

Posted: **Mon Jul 12, 2010 10:13 am**

sorry blobbed

Posted: **Mon Jul 12, 2010 2:58 pm**

Charlie Reams wrote:You mean... opinions can change?

If you're no longer into "screeching right-wing diatribes and spurious nutrionalist pseudoscience", that is to be applauded.

I just don't understand why preferring Rachel means it's necessary to denigrate Carol. Her Countdown performances haven't changed, whatever she's done since. Isn't it more complimentary to Rachel to say that Carol was very good, but Rachel is better - rather than Carol was the spawn of the devil, so anyone would be better?

Posted: **Wed Jul 21, 2010 12:48 pm**

Charlie Reams wrote:
David Williams wrote:It's fun to Search for "Vorderman", and look through the oldest ones excluding recaps. Quite a few criticisms by people we don't hear from nowadays, and withering put-downs from . . . well, I'm sure you can guess.
You mean... opinions can change?

You ARE allowed to change your vote

Posted: **Wed Jul 21, 2010 12:48 pm**

WHY RILEY??!!

Posted: **Wed Jul 21, 2010 12:52 pm**

Dmitry Goretsky wrote:WHY RILEY??!!

http://www.c4countdown.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2009

Posted: **Wed Jul 21, 2010 12:55 pm**

Dmitry - how do you know so much about Countdown when you're from the Ukraine? Do they televise it there, or do you download them from the Internet? (And if so, how did you come to learn of Countdown?)

Posted: **Wed Jul 21, 2010 4:06 pm**

Lesley Hines wrote:
Charlie Reams wrote:spurious nutrionalist pseudoscience
Citation needed

Let me help...

Thanks for that, Leslie. I particularly liked

Bad Science wrote:most corrosive is the way they misrepresent, from their position of dominance in the mainstream media, what scientific evidence for a clinical assertion would actually look like.

which is an aspect I had not previously considered.

Posted: **Sat Jul 24, 2010 8:58 am**

Rosemary Roberts wrote:evidence of excellent taste...

I recommend his whole book, "Bad Science" by Ben Goldacre. It's informative, eye-opening, packed with thoughtful insights and in places lough-out-loud funny.

My kinda reading

Posted: **Sat Jul 24, 2010 12:13 pm**

Lesley Hines wrote:I recommend his whole book, "Bad Science" by Ben Goldacre. It's informative, eye-opening, packed with thoughtful insights and in places lough-out-loud funny.

My kinda reading

Mine too. I had heard of it, but never got round to buying it. Which I have now remedied.

Posted: **Sat Jul 24, 2010 1:20 pm**

It's on my shelf. It's pretty good.

Posted: **Sat Jul 24, 2010 9:21 pm**

It's on my shelf too. Not sure how good it is, as it's been there since Christmas 2008 when it was given to me as a pressie. Now that I've been reminded about it, maybe I'll get it down and open it.

Posted: **Sat Jul 31, 2010 8:17 am**

Michael Wallace wrote:Dmitry - how do you know so much about Countdown when you're from the Ukraine? Do they televise it there, or do you download them from the Internet? (And if so, how did you come to learn of Countdown?)

I learned about it from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Posted: **Sat Jul 31, 2010 9:00 am**

Dmitry Goretsky wrote:
Michael Wallace wrote:Dmitry - how do you know so much about Countdown when you're from the Ukraine? Do they televise it there, or do you download them from the Internet? (And if so, how did you come to learn of Countdown?)
I learned about it from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I don't suppose you fancy watching it regularly, and then forming your opinions from that, do you? Honestly, it'll give you a much better idea of what it's like. You've only got 28 years' worth to catch up on.

Posted: **Tue Aug 31, 2010 8:27 am**

Carol - she's in Mensa with me

Posted: **Tue Aug 31, 2010 5:18 pm**

Hmmm, interesting. There are arguments for both:

Carol - she's in Mensa with me

Rachel - she's so much more friendly

But I think my winner is:

Rachel - because RB2 voted for Carol

Posted: **Tue Aug 31, 2010 6:15 pm**

Is Carol still in Mensa? I know she used to be, in fact she was on the UK committee at around the time I joined. But I thought she'd fallen out with them and had left.

Posted: **Wed Sep 01, 2010 8:07 am**

I had a dream last night that I bumped into Carol at some kind of theme park, and I said "hello" to her but she basically told me to bugger off.

Posted: **Wed Sep 01, 2010 4:20 pm**

Jon Corby wrote:I had a dream last night that I bumped into Carol at some kind of theme park, and I said "hello" to her but she basically told me to bugger off.

In a coincidence that Alec Rivers himself would be proud of, I dreamt last night that Kirk had got a bit confused during my special episode and for some reason now believed that Rachel is my mum, and obviously I laughed in his face because she's the same age as me. But then in a Shyamalan-esque twist, it turned out she actually is my mum, and she'd given birth to me aged 1 month. It was quite an emotional rollercoaster of a dream.

Posted: **Wed Sep 01, 2010 4:23 pm**

Robert Baxter wrote:Carol - she's in Mensa with me

This tells you everything you need to know about Mensa.

Posted: **Thu Sep 02, 2010 8:12 am**

Charlie Reams wrote:
Jon Corby wrote:I had a dream last night that I bumped into Carol at some kind of theme park, and I said "hello" to her but she basically told me to bugger off.
In a coincidence that Alec Rivers himself would be proud of, I dreamt last night that Kirk had got a bit confused during my special episode and for some reason now believed that Rachel is my mum, and obviously I laughed in his face because she's the same age as me. But then in a Shyamalan-esque twist, it turned out she actually is my mum, and she'd given birth to me aged 1 month. It was quite an emotional rollercoaster of a dream.

In a double-coincidence, in my dream a month-old Rachel was giving birth to a ginger twat on a rollercoaster called Emotion at the exact moment that Carol told me to bugger off, AND Alec Rivers appeared to be a schoolteacher of a naughty class or something, as he seemed to be hastily leading a group of children to the exit.

My dream was actually quite funny though, because I did approach Carol mindful of the slagging I've given her but wondering whether she would have seen it (or cared, or even remembered who I was). It was quite realistically done. Well done me.

Posted: **Thu Sep 02, 2010 12:37 pm**

Jon Corby wrote:Well done me.

I love feeling impressed by my own dreams.

Posted: **Thu Sep 02, 2010 4:56 pm**

Jon Corby wrote:Alec Rivers appeared to be a schoolteacher of a naughty class or something, as he seemed to be hastily leading a group of children to the exit.

Posted: **Thu Jan 21, 2016 6:52 am**

I know this is a very old topic, but I voted for Rachel as well.

I know Carol is a Countdown legend but Rachel overall seems more genuine and friendly and stronger at the Maths. Rachel has a better understanding of the more difficult methods, including ones where you go over 1000 and divide down again sometimes, Carol didn't seem to get those at all really.

I'm not sure if Carol was always weaker than Rachel at the Maths, but in her later days when she presents harder methods, she'd be like "bare with me" or "I think that's right" etc sometimes. I did learn from Carol how you find out if a number is divisible by 9, but I'm sure there are some methods that Carol wouldn't have got that Rachel did, at least in Carol's later days anyway.

Rachel did have a bit of a dodgy start, but I'm glad she found her feet. People said when Carol was on she was irreplaceable, now Rachel seems irreplaceable.

Posted: **Thu Jan 21, 2016 9:35 am**

Ah man, Dmitry Goretsky.

Posted: **Thu Jan 21, 2016 10:09 am**

Can someone explain the magic in "the product of two primes", Rachel mentions it often and I feel I should know it but I'm afraid it has escaped me. Thanks.

Posted: **Thu Jan 21, 2016 10:11 am**

Ian Fitzpatrick wrote:Can someone explain the magic in "the product of two primes", Rachel mentions it often and I feel I should know it but I'm afraid it has escaped me. Thanks.

I think it's just that there is a way of getting the target by multiplying 2 smaller numbers, but only one so it's hard to spot.

Posted: **Thu Jan 21, 2016 3:41 pm**

Thomas Cappleman wrote:
Ian Fitzpatrick wrote:Can someone explain the magic in "the product of two primes", Rachel mentions it often and I feel I should know it but I'm afraid it has escaped me. Thanks.
I think it's just that there is a way of getting the target by multiplying 2 smaller numbers, but only one so it's hard to spot.

Ah, thanks Thom. Not so magical after all!

Posted: **Thu Jan 21, 2016 4:31 pm**

I don't remember Carol beating DC, whereas Rachel has done so several times

Posted: **Thu Jan 21, 2016 9:00 pm**

Peter Mabey wrote:I don't remember Carol beating DC, whereas Rachel has done so several times

Oh yeah!! Rachel is clearly very good at the letters and conundrums too. I have often seen her get a conundrum whilst no one else in the studio got it too.

I hope Rachel stays for years to come.

Posted: **Fri Nov 11, 2016 5:30 pm**

I love them both.
If pushed to choose, my vote goes to Rachel.

I'm still waiting for the Carol vs. Rachel Christmas special.

...or failing that, at the very least, the Rachel vs. Susie edition.
[Spoiler alert:- Rachel wins both.]

Posted: **Sat Nov 12, 2016 8:27 am**

I went Carol. Was disappointed to see how far behind she was!.....

Admittedly, it was 90% because she used to live a few mins from me......

Posted: **Sat Nov 12, 2016 2:06 pm**

Having met both of them. Rachel 100%

Posted: **Sat Nov 12, 2016 4:46 pm**

I found Carol quite annoying, so I prefer Rachel, even though I also find her a bit annoying.

Rachel's obviously very intelligent having done maths at Oxford and she's very good at the numbers, but listening to all her conversations with Nick (and previous host(s)), she comes across as really dull. It seems that she's only interested in things like Manchester United, clothes, jewellery and shopping. So although she's intelligent, she comes across as the sort of person who went to university to do maths because she was good at it and going to university was the thing to do, rather than because she has any sort of interest in anything above the mundane. I don't think she'd be someone you'd pick out if you wanted a conversation about anything philosophical/political/intellectual etc.

I'll probably get slated for this, but it's how I think she presents herself, and if my assessment is wrong, I she's invited it.

Posted: **Sat Nov 12, 2016 6:58 pm**

Hi Gev

Posted: **Sat Nov 12, 2016 7:16 pm**

Posted: **Sat Nov 12, 2016 10:30 pm**

Gavin Chipper wrote:I found Carol quite annoying, so I prefer Rachel, even though I also find her a bit annoying.

Rachel's obviously very intelligent having done maths at Oxford and she's very good at the numbers, but listening to all her conversations with Nick (and previous host(s)), she comes across as really dull. It seems that she's only interested in things like Manchester United, clothes, jewellery and shopping. So although she's intelligent, she comes across as the sort of person who went to university to do maths because she was good at it and going to university was the thing to do, rather than because she has any sort of interest in anything above the mundane. I don't think she'd be someone you'd pick out if you wanted a conversation about anything philosophical/political/intellectual etc.

I'll probably get slated for this, but it's how I think she presents herself, and if my assessment is wrong, I she's invited it.

Whereas you just come across as the life of the party

Posted: **Sun Nov 13, 2016 9:09 pm**

eating contest 2 burn

Posted: **Mon Nov 14, 2016 6:49 pm**

I don't think that we should assume that Rachel is incapable of interesting or intelligent conversation just because a lot of what she says on Countdown seems boring. She has to talk about the kind of things that viewers will want to hear.

Posted: **Mon Nov 14, 2016 8:07 pm**

Heather just called you boring Gev

Posted: **Mon Nov 14, 2016 8:47 pm**

Speaking to Rachel is much more fun than speaking to Gev, let's be honest.

Posted: **Mon Nov 14, 2016 9:47 pm**

Mark Deeks wrote:Speaking to Rachel is much more fun than speaking to Gev, let's be honest.

You do need to build up a rapport for when she's your co-host, I suppose, so it's just as well you think that.

Posted: **Tue Nov 15, 2016 1:29 pm**

I know this is pretty much a dead topic, but I think it's worth pointing out that when Countdown had four million viewers, most of them probably tuned in to see Richard and Carol, with only a passing interest in the game show going on in the background. Not the case now, I suspect.

One thing I would give Rachel a lot of credit for. Carol used to browbeat people into going for one large and five small, and keeping it nice and simple. Very few went for anything else. Rachel actually prefers it to be more difficult, and I'm sure that's had an effect on contestants, so there's a lot more variety these days.

Posted: **Wed Nov 16, 2016 12:10 am**

David Williams wrote:I know this is pretty much a dead topic, but I think it's worth pointing out that when Countdown had four million viewers, most of them probably tuned in to see Richard and Carol, with only a passing interest in the game show going on in the background.

Woah, go easy on the member berries!

I doubt there was ever a time when the draw of countdown was the presenters rather than the game.
And the viewing figures come from a time when there were significantly fewer options on TV, and when CD had a more favourable slot in the day's schedule.

Posted: **Wed Nov 16, 2016 12:27 am**

Mark Deeks wrote:
Gavin Chipper wrote:I found Carol quite annoying, so I prefer Rachel, even though I also find her a bit annoying.

Rachel's obviously very intelligent having done maths at Oxford and she's very good at the numbers, but listening to all her conversations with Nick (and previous host(s)), she comes across as really dull. It seems that she's only interested in things like Manchester United, clothes, jewellery and shopping. So although she's intelligent, she comes across as the sort of person who went to university to do maths because she was good at it and going to university was the thing to do, rather than because she has any sort of interest in anything above the mundane. I don't think she'd be someone you'd pick out if you wanted a conversation about anything philosophical/political/intellectual etc.

I'll probably get slated for this, but it's how I think she presents herself, and if my assessment is wrong, I she's invited it.
Whereas you just come across as the life of the party

hahahaha... that's the perfect response to that rant, in fairness!

Gevin, I'm a little disappointed in your judgement of Rachel.
Have you watched the show?!

She has that cheeky grin and a glint in the eye that suggest a wicked sense of humour.
Aside from that, you can often tell that she has strong opinions on social issues, but is contractually obliged not to go down that route. I recall her at one point *almost* going into territory about a woman's "right to choose", but brought it back to levity... as that segment of the show is supposed to be light and breezy.

When you apply for series 77 of the show next April, and finally get to meet her, hopefully u'll find good reason to reassess your original take on Rachel Riley. (btw, it took me around 2 series before I stopped referring to her as "new Carol" lol)

Posted: **Thu Nov 17, 2016 5:56 pm**

Gavin Chipper wrote:I found Carol quite annoying, so I prefer Rachel, even though I also find her a bit annoying.

Rachel's obviously very intelligent having done maths at Oxford and she's very good at the numbers, but listening to all her conversations with Nick (and previous host(s)), she comes across as really dull. It seems that she's only interested in things like Manchester United, clothes, jewellery and shopping. So although she's intelligent, she comes across as the sort of person who went to university to do maths because she was good at it and going to university was the thing to do, rather than because she has any sort of interest in anything above the mundane. I don't think she'd be someone you'd pick out if you wanted a conversation about anything philosophical/political/intellectual etc.

I'll probably get slated for this, but it's how I think she presents herself, and if my assessment is wrong, I she's invited it.

I wouldn't recommend discussing politics with Carol, though...

Posted: **Fri Nov 18, 2016 2:13 pm**

Martin Bishop wrote:I wouldn't recommend discussing politics with Carol, though...

Why on earth not?

c4countdown

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