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Rachel Riley
Rachel Annabelle Riley MBE (born 11 January 1986) is an English television presenter. She co-presents the Channel 4 daytime puzzle show Countdown and its comedy spin-off 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. She is a mathematics graduate.
Riley's television debut came when she joined Countdown aged 22. With an interest in popularising mathematics and the sciences, she has since co-presented The Gadget Show on Channel 5 (2013–14) and It's Not Rocket Science on ITV (2016). She was also a contestant on the BBC celebrity dance show Strictly Come Dancing in 2013.
As an anti-racism campaigner, Riley was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to Holocaust education and antisemitism awareness. In October 2025, she received the Freedom of the City of London in recognition of her outstanding contributions to Holocaust education and antisemitism campaigning.
Riley was born in Rochford. Her mother is Jewish, and she has stated that her "family came over in the pogroms" from Tsarist Russia. Riley was raised in the Thorpe Bay area of Southend-on-Sea and was educated at the independent Thorpe Hall School, and Southend High School for Girls, a grammar school, where she passed three A-Levels at grade A and an AS-Level, after which she obtained a second-class degree in applied maths at Oriel College, Oxford.
During a university holiday, Riley considered a career in the financial sector and completed an internship at Deutsche Bank in the City of London. The experience put her off: she found the extreme behaviour of City traders wearing, and she disliked the early-morning train commute.
On Countdown, Riley replaced the long-serving Carol Vorderman. Like Vorderman, Riley's role is to place tiles on the board for the letters and numbers rounds and to find a solution in the numbers rounds if the contestants are unable to do so. Riley's appointment to Countdown was announced at the same time as the announcement of a new main host, Jeff Stelling, replacing Des O'Connor; the duo of Stelling and Riley was in place for the new series beginning in January 2009. Although she had no ambition to be a television presenter, she was encouraged to apply by her mother, and decided to do so because she was interested in the numbers part of the game. Having beaten 1,000 applicants for the role, she commented, "There's only one cool maths job around and I was lucky enough to get it so I'm absolutely thrilled." Since its first broadcast on 2 January 2012, Riley has also performed her Countdown role on the comedy crossover spin-off version, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, alongside comedian Jimmy Carr as host.
From September 2013, Riley appeared in the eleventh series of the BBC One ballroom dancing programme Strictly Come Dancing with professional dancing partner and future husband Pasha Kovalev. She was eliminated in week six of the show, on 3 November 2013, after losing out in the dance-off against Abbey Clancy and Aljaž Škorjanec, who went on to win the series. According to Riley, she lacked a natural talent for performing, so instead sought to frame each dance as that of a character. For the first five weeks, Riley suffered from stage fright, commenting, "As soon as the music would start, I would have a fuzzy brain and it was like an out-of-body experience"; after seeing a cognitive behavioural therapist, she was able to control her breathing, and so was only able to truly enjoy the show for what proved to be her final appearance.
From 2013 to 2014, Riley co-presented the Channel 5 programme The Gadget Show with Jason Bradbury. She worked on three series of the show and was later replaced by Amy Williams. In 2016, Riley was part of the three-person presenting team for ITV's six-part series, It's Not Rocket Science, billed by the network as an entertainment series celebrating science. In August 2016, it was announced that Riley had joined Sky Sports to present Friday Night Football alongside her former Countdown co-presenter Jeff Stelling, and Fantasy Football Club with Max Rushden and Paul Merson. She left Friday Night Football in 2017.
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Rachel Riley
Rachel Annabelle Riley MBE (born 11 January 1986) is an English television presenter. She co-presents the Channel 4 daytime puzzle show Countdown and its comedy spin-off 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. She is a mathematics graduate.
Riley's television debut came when she joined Countdown aged 22. With an interest in popularising mathematics and the sciences, she has since co-presented The Gadget Show on Channel 5 (2013–14) and It's Not Rocket Science on ITV (2016). She was also a contestant on the BBC celebrity dance show Strictly Come Dancing in 2013.
As an anti-racism campaigner, Riley was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to Holocaust education and antisemitism awareness. In October 2025, she received the Freedom of the City of London in recognition of her outstanding contributions to Holocaust education and antisemitism campaigning.
Riley was born in Rochford. Her mother is Jewish, and she has stated that her "family came over in the pogroms" from Tsarist Russia. Riley was raised in the Thorpe Bay area of Southend-on-Sea and was educated at the independent Thorpe Hall School, and Southend High School for Girls, a grammar school, where she passed three A-Levels at grade A and an AS-Level, after which she obtained a second-class degree in applied maths at Oriel College, Oxford.
During a university holiday, Riley considered a career in the financial sector and completed an internship at Deutsche Bank in the City of London. The experience put her off: she found the extreme behaviour of City traders wearing, and she disliked the early-morning train commute.
On Countdown, Riley replaced the long-serving Carol Vorderman. Like Vorderman, Riley's role is to place tiles on the board for the letters and numbers rounds and to find a solution in the numbers rounds if the contestants are unable to do so. Riley's appointment to Countdown was announced at the same time as the announcement of a new main host, Jeff Stelling, replacing Des O'Connor; the duo of Stelling and Riley was in place for the new series beginning in January 2009. Although she had no ambition to be a television presenter, she was encouraged to apply by her mother, and decided to do so because she was interested in the numbers part of the game. Having beaten 1,000 applicants for the role, she commented, "There's only one cool maths job around and I was lucky enough to get it so I'm absolutely thrilled." Since its first broadcast on 2 January 2012, Riley has also performed her Countdown role on the comedy crossover spin-off version, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, alongside comedian Jimmy Carr as host.
From September 2013, Riley appeared in the eleventh series of the BBC One ballroom dancing programme Strictly Come Dancing with professional dancing partner and future husband Pasha Kovalev. She was eliminated in week six of the show, on 3 November 2013, after losing out in the dance-off against Abbey Clancy and Aljaž Škorjanec, who went on to win the series. According to Riley, she lacked a natural talent for performing, so instead sought to frame each dance as that of a character. For the first five weeks, Riley suffered from stage fright, commenting, "As soon as the music would start, I would have a fuzzy brain and it was like an out-of-body experience"; after seeing a cognitive behavioural therapist, she was able to control her breathing, and so was only able to truly enjoy the show for what proved to be her final appearance.
From 2013 to 2014, Riley co-presented the Channel 5 programme The Gadget Show with Jason Bradbury. She worked on three series of the show and was later replaced by Amy Williams. In 2016, Riley was part of the three-person presenting team for ITV's six-part series, It's Not Rocket Science, billed by the network as an entertainment series celebrating science. In August 2016, it was announced that Riley had joined Sky Sports to present Friday Night Football alongside her former Countdown co-presenter Jeff Stelling, and Fantasy Football Club with Max Rushden and Paul Merson. She left Friday Night Football in 2017.
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