11 January 2023 , 15:05
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Carol Vorderman has opened up about her 'weird' meeting with her dad when she was aged 42.
The former Countdown star spoke to Michelle Visage on her Rulebreakers podcast about her family relationship and being brought up with a single parent.
Michelle invited Carol onto the podcast, which interviews "true originals who have ripped up the rule book to forge their own path to success".
She asked Carol to talk about her "humble beginnings" where she was brought up by a single-parent Catholic family in North Wales.
The 62-year-old was born in Bedford on Christmas Eve, 1960, with her family going through a very difficult period around the time of her birth.
Carol Vorderman takes rarely seen daughter Katie to meet Lewis Capaldi backstage
(Dave Benett/Getty Images)
Carol said she didn't see her dad until she was 42 (@carolvorders/Instagram)Carol talked about her father, Tony, having an affair whilst her mother, Edwina (also known by her middle name, Jean), was pregnant.
However, he did not tell her until after Carol had been born.
Carol opened up to Michelle saying: "My mother and father were married and I had an older brother and sister, but my father had an affair when my mother was pregnant with me. He told my mum, once she'd given birth to me around Christmas time, and then she left and went back home to Wales, where she was brought up.
Carol's mum died in 2017 (Internet Unknown)"So, I was brought up in North Wales in a single-parent Catholic family - which was very, very unusual - in poverty. I was surrounded by my cousins and I never knew my Vorderman family because my father, even though he would have a lot to do with my brother and sister, refused to have anything to do with me."
Carol explained that it was just her that her dad did not stay in contact with and she didn't see him until she was 42.
She said by that point he was an "old man" and knew she was living a good life so didn't see the point in their reunion.
Carol said her dad had an affair (@carolvorders/Instagram)
Carol was brought up in North Wales (Dave Benett/Getty Images)She said: "I know who I am, I'm a good person, I look after my mother, I look after the kids, all that kind of thing... he was in the Dutch resistance in the Second World War. When I was born, the Second World War was still very much part of your parent's everyday, really, because they'd lived through this terrible trauma and that had only finished 15 years before I was born.
"To me, in my head when I was growing up, he was either this romantic hero, or he was a villain. He was never just a normal Joe, he was one or the other."
Carol's mum Jean went on to remarry when Carol was nine years old.
She tied the knot with an Italian prisoner of war, Gabriel Rizzi, who Carol described as her dad who had been posted to a prisoner of war camp in North Wales during the Second World War.
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