Carol Vorderman giving up TV career to fly solo around the world

The former Countdown presenter has spent the last 30 years on our screens, but said she’s now ready to quit the showbiz lifestyle for good.

“I have been doing this for 30 years. It no longer holds the same thrill. I am at an age where I want to do other things,” she told the Mail on Sunday’s Event magazine.

Carol said she has become “semi-retired” to look after her 87-year-old mother and two children, daughter Katie, a student at Imperial College London, and son Cameron.

“I am 55 in December. No matter whether anyone says, ‘Oh, you look good for your age,’ you’re still getting older.

“You’re not like King Canute, you can’t hold the tide back. But there are things I really want to do, in a more healthy way, as opposed to carrying on and still flogging myself all the time,” she added.

One of Carol’s dreams is to fly solo around the world in Mildred, her Diamond DA-42 VI, a state-of-the-art plane that costs from half a million for the basic model – although Carol, who is worth a reported £15m, will only admit it cost “a lot of money”.

Carol studied aeronautical engineering at Cambridge University with hopes of being a pilot but was denied a place by the RAF.

She earned her solo licence two years ago and now plans to spend two months on the round-the-world trip to mark the 75th anniversary of the Air Training Corps.

The plane is named after Mildred Bruce, the female pilot whose route she plans to follow.

She will fly over Turkey and the Middle East, Russia and into Chinese airspace on her flight plan, but she is not too concerned about the terrorist attacks that have brought down planes in those areas since last year.

“Other people have flown that way, so I mustn’t over-egg the pudding,” she said, while explaining that “Mildred is a composite aircraft so she doesn’t have a particularly high radar signature, so anti-aircraft guns won’t be easily trained on her.”

Carol also talked about her reunion with former Red Arrows pilot Graham Duff who she said she is “very happy with” and her work on encouraging girls into studying maths and science subjects.

A two-time Rear of the Year winner, Carol admitted she’d used her buxom looks throughout her career, but now used them to get an important message across.

“Girls are taught that their value largely lies in how they look.

“If I want to go on telly and talk about education, no chance. If I want to do something about dyeing my hair blonde it’s, ‘Oh yeah, off you go’,” she said.