Carol vorderman autobiography of a face

Carol vorderman autobiography of a face: Carol Vorderman and her sister

I got married on the rebound to a man I hardly knew. So when I met a lively young naval officer called Chris a couple of weeks later, I was only too ready to have a good time. Within six weeks, he had proposed and I had accepted. We were to marry just a few months later. I eventually voiced my fears, but the marriage went ahead. Predictably, it unravelled very quickly and after a year it was over.

The consequent break-up affected me badly for a long time. I felt a complete failure. On the face of things, life after my marriage went on. Unsuccessful marriages: Carol with her first husband Chris Maher left and current partner Des Kelly right. Paddy and I met at the wedding of one of my Cambridge friends in He had a sharp brain and an even sharper sense of humour and we started dating.

We were married in when I was just about to turn 30, and so began a whirlwind decade that would take a toll on me in ways I could never have foreseen. Within three months, I was back at work, with my mum holding the fort in the nursery at our home near Maidenhead, in Berkshire. Now 82, she is still by my side. By the time Katie was born, we were already better off financially than I could ever have imagined I would be, but I still wanted to work for more security — memories of my childhood with little financial support from my absent father burned deep.

Privately, my self-esteem was dropping fast and I was stuck in a vicious cycle'. ByI was working so many hours that I never had a chance to do anything other than make TV programmes or be a mother.

Carol vorderman autobiography of a face: Former Countdown mathematician Carol Vorderman is

The first time I appeared on the cover of Radio Times, one side of my fringe was about an inch higher than the other because my scissors were blunt after Katie had been cutting and pasting for her artwork. Ah well. Whenever I got home early enough from a day of filming, I would take my baby daughter in my arms and try to convince myself that I could have it all.

What a joke, as it would later transpire. Amid more and more contracts, I became pregnant for a second time. Our beautiful baby boy, Cameron, was born in February But work carried on. Byto the outside world, I appeared to be a soaring success. The highest-paid woman on television, by all accounts. Their final efforts had been to put milk in a medicine glass, tipping it into his mouth.

Mum used this method, putting a towel around Anton's neck and gently tipping the milk into his mouth. She had no way of knowing how much milk he was taking in, but she knew the specialist at Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool would not examine any baby with a cleft until they weighed nine pounds. It took four months for Anton to hit the weight.

His first operation, at the age of just five months, was to lift and centre the bone in his nose. Three weeks later, Mum returned from our home in Prestatyn, North Wales, for Anton's second operation, to re-shape the bubble of tissue under his nostril into a functional upper lip. For the first time, Anton had something resembling a mouth.

It made his tortuous feeding routine much easier, and he repaid my mother with the first of his endless smiles. At 18 months, Anton returned to hospital so the doctors could make him a palate on the roof of his mouth. Until then, he couldn't eat solids. If he tried, it would regurgitate up through his nose. When Anton's teeth came through, they fell out.

In the end, aged three, he returned to Alder Hey to have a dental plate fitted. To this day, Mum thinks that our father struggled to accept a son with such an obvious disfigurement. Our father was a handsome man, and although he never said so, she believes he found it difficult to come to terms with Anton's problems. Anton was seven when I was born, and my parents' marriage ended just three weeks later.

From that moment on, my mother raised us and our older sister Trixie on her own with very little money. So what are my own early memories of this remarkable brother? Anton's speech was badly affected. As soon as I could talk, I could understand what he was saying and became his unofficial interpreter. Strange as it sounds, I never really noticed anything different about him.

To me, he was just my older brother, and the kindest boy I had ever known. When I was a schoolgirl, it was Anton with his keen brain and endless patience who helped me with my maths homework. Glamorous: Carol likes dressing up - but thinks our society is obsessed with how people look. He was, I later realised, crippled with shyness. If we walked down the street together, I would see people do double takes as they looked at his face.

But I always saw Anton with a smile playing at his lips. When Mum left the man who had become my stepfather during my teens, we went to live with Anton at his flat in Rhyl. I was a teenager, a time when you are naturally concerned about looking good. But in our family, the emphasis was never on beauty but on brains and hard work. One of the hardest moments came when Anton had a major operation in his late 20s.

Carol vorderman autobiography of a face: Carol Jean Vorderman (born 24

He had to spend two weeks in hospital, with his upper and lower lip sewn together. There was a gap, for him to use a straw, and as soon as I came up to his hospital bed, he grunted: 'Don't make me laugh. It has always been hard to stop Anton from laughing. We spent the rest of the visit trying to stifle our giggles. Then, walking away, the indignity of his situation hit me.

Kind, gentle Anton had never once complained. Anton is pleased that he was born at a time when the quest for physical perfection wasn't as all-encompassing as it is today. I feel so strongly about this that I asked for a special debate at the Cheltenham Science Festival this week. Last year, research by Cardiff University and the Healing Foundation found that through 9, hours of television from topeople with disfigurements or disabilities were rarely shown in a positive light.

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Archived from the original on 19 December Comic Relief Does The Apprentice participant. Cooking With the Stars participant. Have I Got News for You guest host. I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!