The maths whizz discusses the Strictly Curse - she met her second husband on the show - and the alleged rift between her and Anne Robinson.
When Rachel Riley's daughters are older, she is going to show them "the moment Daddy was presented to Mummy". The numbers expert on the TV show Countdown met her husband, the Russian dancer Pasha Kovalev, when they were paired on UK's Strictly Come Dancing in 2013. "I love the idea that we can show them that," she says. "The first time I saw Pasha, he was dancing with [the actress] Natalie Gumede, who is a brilliant dancer, so I had written him off as being partnered with one of the good ones, and was looking around, like, 'Who am I going to get?' " When they were paired, she says, "everyone — the cameramen, the runners, the dancers were saying 'Well done!' because they loved him".
Riley now shares a home in west London with Kovalev and their daughters, Maven, two, and Noa, six months. She's exactly as she seems on screen: open and free of any airs or graces. She keeps apologising for her "baby brain", but I can't think of anyone who appears more adept at juggling the demands of being a working mother. She is already back on Countdown and the whole family travels up to Manchester for filming three days a fortnight.
The current host, Anne Robinson, is leaving Countdown after just a year and the bookies consider Riley a leading contender to take over. She bats away tabloid stories about tensions between her and Robinson, saying it stems from a media obsession with perceived "arguments between women" that is "never going to go away". She is, however, noticeably cooler when discussing Robinson than the wordsmith Susie Dent, a friend who she once revealed borrowed her bras. "Susie is so funny, a one-off," she says. "She's so bright, but she has always got her top on inside-out and she'll always forget her bras!"
Did Riley consider taking a longer maternity leave before returning to the show? "If I don't go back I don't get paid," she explains. "And Countdown's great because Noa can feed in the breaks. I wouldn't have gone back so fast if I'd had to stop breastfeeding." She stopped feeding Maven only recently; there are photos with one child on each side.
She claims that she and Kovalev are "winging it" and says "parenting is various degrees of failing on different days". But then she adds that she applies maths to motherhood, such as deciding to co-sleep after she studied the stats to reassure herself it was safe: "There's just so much scaremongering."
Numbers are in everything, she says. She even owes her relationship to them: Kovalev, 42, only learnt ballroom because he knew the ratio of men to women (2:9) meant it would help him meet girls. Riley's name always comes up on lists of celebrities afflicted by the "Strictly curse", although she and Kovalev did not become a couple until after they had finished filming and she had split from her first husband, Jamie Gilbert. She had met Gilbert, the son of a computer tycoon, at university, married him in 2012 but separated after 16 months. She hates the idea of a curse, though. "Are you calling my babies a curse? That's not right! If you have cracks [Strictly] can expose them. It gave me the distance to make the break that was going to happen anyway."
She went on Strictly because it was her mother and late grandfather's favourite show, but was voted out in week five. She received a lot of criticism for her dancing (the judge Craig Revel Horwood described her salsa as "wriggling around like a slug in salt"), but I suggest this was because she was up against people who had already had extensive training. Surely Strictly needs more contestants who are beginners? She nods: "I think Brits want an underdog. We want to build someone up, not see someone who is good from the start — that's not the heart of these programmes."
The show is "very produced", she says. "I think they know from the start who they want to win and what journeys they want to take different people on, to have the right balance, and they can obviously fix the scores."
The BBC says: "This claim is categorically untrue. The BBC has strict procedures and editorial guidelines in place regarding impartiality and Strictly upholds all of these."
After the show Riley suffered from what the psychologist Linda Papadopoulos told her was mild post-traumatic stress disorder. "It's a really intense period," she says. "I had insecurities about my dancing because your whole self-worth is built around it. And you have this team mentality, then you're suddenly dropped. It still carries on but you've been put in the bin. And you don't do the exercise you were doing, so you have the loss of all the serotonin … When I was doing it, it was the best fun, then in the years that followed it was just …" — she pauses, picking her next word carefully — "tricky."
"A lot of people end up with some sort of mental misalignment from it. Sophie Ellis-Bextor [a friend who took part in the same series] said that they needed to have a bit more care for contestants. I'm glad I'm away from it now." During the show Riley had cognitive behavioural therapy on Kovalev's suggestion after she developed stage fright when her quickstep went wrong. She has since continued with the treatment.
Riley admits that no one would have put Kovalev and her together but they share similar values. They also both have roots in Ukraine; Riley's ancestors on her mother's side and Kovalev's distant relations were from the country, though his close family are mostly in Siberia. "It's horrific," she says of the invasion. "You also realise how different a place Russia is from everywhere else. If you can't speak English your news sources are state TV — all different brands saying the same thing … [Because of what] they've been subject to, many Russians have a conspiratorial mindset. They've been primed not to believe anything from anywhere else."
Kovalev has spoken out against the war, saying: "Our passport may say one thing but our hearts are with our family, friends and everyone still in Ukraine who are fighting for their freedom and lives." He hosted a charity event last month, Rise Up with the Arts, to raise money for Ukraine.
His mother has come over from Siberia to help with her granddaughters. "She has gone really quiet," Riley says. "She doesn't know the full extent of the conflict because she hasn't got access to western news because she doesn't speak English." Riley speaks some Russian, but "not enough to have these kind of conversations".
The couple are raising their daughters to be bilingual. "Listening to Maven is like maths because you're trying to work out, is she speaking English or Russian? You have to have this logical approach."
Riley's own childhood was "very middle class", with supportive parents who would give small financial incentives to her and her brother, Alex, for good grades. Her father, Chris, was an auditor; her mother, Celia, ran a series of businesses before becoming a charity fundraiser.
Riley liked maths "because you can just use your brain and paper and you don't have to remember anything". As a child, a rudimentary computer on which she could do maths was a favourite toy. "There was a timer and I'd be trying to beat my previous score," she says. "It takes you away somewhere. When I am doing a maths puzzle or equation I'm there. It's mindful." She would watch Countdown after school.
Why do other people hate maths? "I think it starts when you are really young, with people around you, whether it's parents, teachers or people on telly, saying, 'Oh, don't worry, I was rubbish at numbers too,' as though it doesn't matter and isn't changeable." Riley is an ambassador for the charity National Numeracy, which champions adult maths skills and believes anyone can improve their numeracy. It's why she wrote her book, At Sixes and Sevens. "It was about trying to re-engage those people who were told they were rubbish or gave up when they were young, [to tell them] that they can go back and learn it, and that there's a value in it, from doing your tax return to going on holiday and trying to understand exchange rates."
Last month Riley was horrified when the government's social mobility commissioner, the head teacher Katharine Birbalsingh, claimed that girls do not like studying physics because there was too much "hard maths" involved.
"It's utter nonsense," says Riley, who took physics A-level as well as maths and further maths. "She even said in her own testimony that she wasn't an expert. It's an attitude I thought had died off among female educators, especially ones tasked with helping to promote social mobility. If we keep telling women they're not built for this, what do we expect to happen? We should be championing women in these fields and telling girls they can do it if they want to."
Riley never hid how good she was at maths at school. "I was teased, I was called Boff. It wasn't a cool thing, but I was never really bothered about being cool."
The family lived in Southend-on-Sea in Essex. Has the Essex girl stereotype died? She laughs. "I think it did die, but it got resurrected." By The Only Way Is Essex? "Yes. Even when I was younger you'd go on holiday and people from around the world had heard of Essex girls. Never in a good way. It came back when Towie launched. When I was younger it was about promiscuity, 'Essex girls are sluts.' It's sexist, and we didn't realise that, especially in the Nineties. Back then it was 'banter'. People underestimate girls generally, but particularly those with Essex accents. Essex actually has some of the best schools in the country."
Riley attended an all-girls grammar school where she was encouraged to apply to Oxford. She didn't expect to get an interview, found the whole process so "scary" that she wanted to leave midway through, but was then accepted to read maths. At first she thought she would be "the idiot from Essex … After my first term I was crying because it was so hard. [Then] I went back and won a prize. Women, especially, often have imposter syndrome." She was the only girl among the six students reading maths at Oriel College.
After university she was planning to go into civil engineering until her mother, her aunt and her ex's mother all showed her the ad for the Countdown role, replacing Carol Vorderman, who had been ousted reportedly for refusing a pay cut. "They knew I was a maths geek and liked puzzles, and that I had always watched it, but I had never been near a TV studio," she says. "I never imagined I'd get it. Telly is like this magical place that no real people go to."
In the end she beat more than 3,000 applicants to the role despite having no TV experience. She wasn't given screen training either, just thrown into filming. "Thankfully it was before social media, so that was a life-saver," she says. "Because going from nothing to having everyone's opinion of you out there would have been awful … I don't envy people going into the industry now."
Riley argues the term "geek" has been "reappropriated as a badge of honour and she's pleased that geeks are in the ascendant but there's a notable exception: our tech overlords. "You think of Silicon Valley and it's the same skill set and mindset dictating everything to the whole world. You need diversity of thought, background and experience. They've got themselves in a bit of a mess." She corrects herself. "They've got the rest of us in a bit of a mess."
This issue is personal for Riley. Although she also describes herself as an atheist, she is Jewish, her mother's family coming to Britain after fleeing pogroms in tsarist Russia. This inspired her to speak up against antisemitism in the Labour Party during the Corbyn era, not only criticising his failure to tackle the problem but calling the former leader antisemitic himself. As a result she was subjected to such sustained and extreme abuse that Channel 4 gave her extra security. She was pregnant with Maven at the time, and panicked when she thought the stress had made her stop moving in her womb.
In one particularly cruel moment Riley received a message on Twitter just before her due date in which the sender said they hoped she would have a stillbirth. Some of this abuse resulted in her taking legal action. In early 2019 she also became embroiled in an online spat about Corbyn and antisemitism with Laura Murray, a former aide to Corbyn, who tweeted that Riley was "as dangerous as she is stupid". Riley sued Murray for libel and late last year was awarded £10,000 ($15,700) in damages.
"Ah, the kinder, gentler politics!" Riley says, echoing Jeremy Corbyn's pledge to cut out personal abuse in his first speech to the Labour Party Conference as leader in 2015. "It's vile. It was intimidation aimed at anyone speaking out on that topic [antisemitism]. But they made their own mistake in exposing themselves. I wasn't politically vocal until I saw how awful they were."
The legal fight was draining, she says. "You have to go through the evidence over and over for your case, so you are looking at the worst abuse of yourself. But I had so much support from the Jewish community."
She says it was "terrifying" when the hard left had political power under Corbyn. "So many people I knew were talking about leaving the country … Jews were scared." Since Keir Starmer took over as the Labour leader she no longer feels it is her fight but the abuse keeps coming. "They don't let it go," she says.
Riley trended on Twitter recently after winning £30,000 on Family Fortunes for a charity that provides school breakfasts for disadvantaged children. Critics called her a hypocrite. "They say I am a Tory because I campaigned against an antisemite — even though I posted that I voted for Chuka Umunna [a Liberal Democrat candidate in 2019]. But because I didn't like antisemitism that means I am a Tory."
Hard-left activists also threatened to boycott The Big Issue after the magazine, which supports the homeless, ran an interview with her. "It is a cult — not all of them, but the hardcore," she says. "Now they're in their little bubble — they haven't got any political power — I'm doing my best to ignore them."
False claims were made about her on social media, including that she was having secret meetings with Jacob Rees-Mogg to further her political ambitions. In 2019 there was also talk that she would be part of a centrist pro-European party after she attended a meeting hosted by Tony Blair's former chief of staff, Jonathan Powell. JK Rowling was mooted as a possible leader. "It was nonsense," Riley says of the speculation.
She defends Rowling, who is also the victim of online abuse, especially for her stand on women's rights. "I think a lot of the attacks on JK Rowling are really because she spoke out for Jews and against Jeremy Corbyn and antisemitism." Riley applauds Rowling's philanthropy too: "She has made a real difference to the world. And [just saying] this will get us both cancelled."
Would she ever go into politics? She shakes her head. "Why would I want to, especially in this climate? Why would any decent person want to go into politics and get abused? It's really damaging."
Riley is an ambassador for the Centre for Counting Digital Hate (CCDH), so she understands the scale of the issue. "On social media a few people with a pile-on can really influence what's said and gets done. You can see how scared everyone is to say what a woman is. In their mind they are thinking if they say something, Twitter will get them. It takes the power away from people and puts it in the hands of a small number of extremists … CCDH talks about democracy being eroded because they're drowning out particularly women's voices."
Mostly, she says, she is too busy with her daughters to see the abusive messages she gets, but she worries about girls on Instagram. "Instagram has a function where anyone you're not following, who you have no relation to, can send you pictures of their penis," she says. Facebook, which owns Instagram, has the technology to stop this but doesn't, she adds. "The media is so regulated, but social media is still completely unregulated. The government's online safety bill is so overdue." Sometimes technology has increased the threat to women in the real world too. Riley recently revealed that an unnamed celebrity tried to make a video looking up her skirt by placing his Apple Watch on the floor while she was playing table tennis with Kovalev.
I drag her into another political fight, the privatisation of Channel 4. "I haven't seen anyone come out in support of it," she says. "It seems like ministers don't understand Channel 4's remit or purpose, which is to make things that represent different groups of people rather than things that are either purely ratings-driven or that make money. Why do we need to make another Netflix or Amazon?"
Despite all the stresses, Riley says she is happy with her life. As well as her work, she clearly loves being a mother. Though she had a miscarriage in early 2021, between her daughters, she is stoical, describing the baby as the one "that wasn't meant to be" and stressing that she still feels lucky. "It's one of those things; we got the next one."
When she can squeeze it in around the children, her love beyond maths is football, especially her beloved Manchester United. Her great success is winning her husband over to the game. "When we met, Pasha didn't know who [the former Man Utd manager] Alex Ferguson was," she says. "Now he loves it. I came home recently and he had the match on. He'd watched the first half, made dinner and was complaining that Phil Jones [one of United's defenders] had been rubbish. And I was, like, 'You really are my perfect man!' "
At Sixes and Sevens: How to Understand Numbers and Make Maths Easy by Rachel Riley is published by HarperCollins.
Written by: Rosamund Urwin
© The Times of London
