At last I’m ready for TAKE-OFF
Carol Vorderman’s plan to fly solo around the world was grounded by her mother’s tragic death and her own suicidal depression. But now (with a little help from yams!) the honorary air force group captain tells More...
Last year was a strange old year,’ says Carol Vorderman with a sigh, understandably close to tears for a moment. The maths genius, television star and passionate pilot is describing how she was about to make a daring attempt to fly solo around the world when her mum passed away. ‘It is horrible, watching somebody die.’
And now she reveals that her great adventure – which was on hold, apparently doomed – looks to be back on track. ‘It was a massive disappointment. The flight filled my head for three years, so it was like another loss, really.’
When she was growing up, the former star of Countdown and Loose Women wanted to be a fighter pilot, but that ambition was thwarted by the sexism of the Seventies. ‘I tried to join the air squadron at university and learn to fly but they said, “You can’t, you’re a girl”.’
Now aged 57, Vorderman has a pilot’s licence, an aircraft of her own (a £600,000 twin-propellor Diamond DA42 called Mildred) and a close relationship with the UK’s Royal Air Force. Last week, she joined Dan Snow in hosting a star-studded gala at the Albert Hall celebrating 100 years of the RAF.
But today she’s talking for the first time about how tragedy almost put a stop to that much-publicised roundthe-world trip.
A date was set for departure last May, camera crews were standing by and Vorderman had just completed a hair-raising final practice run with a co-pilot.
‘We’d got to Iceland and there was a massive storm on the [US] eastern seaboard. It was coming towards us so we had to get out or we’d have been stuck in Iceland. I flew home directly from Reykjavik to Gloucestershire, ahead of the storm. I got home and Mum said she wasn’t well.’
Vorderman lives in Bristol with her student son Cameron, 21, and 26-yearold scientist daughter Katie. Her mother Jean shared the home too, for decades.
‘Three days later, she was in a lot of pain, so I rushed her to the Bristol Royal Infirmary. She had tests on the Sunday and on the Monday she was told she had terminal cancer. They said, “It’s everywhere. What do you want to do?”’ Jean had already had three bouts of cancer, so she turned down chemotherapy. ‘Bearing in mind she was almost 89, Mum said, “I don’t want to go through that, just keep me out of pain”.’
Vorderman’s voice catches as she talks about this, in a restaurant near her home in the city’s Clifton Village. I notice this because she seems very much in control the rest of the time.
She also looks magnificent in leather trousers and a black turtleneck sweater, her hair long and blonde. If anything, she looks younger, fitter and happier than she has for years. But we are just a few steps from where Jean died in June last year, at home with the family gathered around.
‘When you watch someone who is terminally ill, when there is no end game other than death, you go through the grieving emotions in the month before they die. It’s not a shock as it would be with someone who had an accident or something.’
Still, Vorderman was left reeling – and it is only now that she is able to consider what it means for her plans. ‘I haven’t flown my plane since the day I landed from Iceland,’ she reveals.
Mildred was shipped to California over the winter in preparation for another attempt. ‘I thought I would reboot it sooner, but it has taken time. I am hoping to attempt the flight again in the next couple of years, because it takes that long to plan.’
As if all this was not intense enough, shortly before her mother’s death last summer the presenter had chosen to go public about how the menopause had caused depression so bad she even felt suicidal.
‘I wouldn’t have done anything because I have kids and I am a single parent, but I definitely had a lot of thoughts that were in that bracket. I didn’t want to wake up.
‘I wanted this blackness to stop and I couldn’t think of any way of making it stop other than just stopping.’ It definitely wasn’t circumstances that were bringing her down. ‘I was sitting pretty financially, I had great friends. If there was anything wrong it was only five per cent of my life. But this depression was something else.’
A friend recommended treatment by Professor John Studd, an expert on menopausal depression based in London. ‘I was surprised by the response when I spoke about this on television with my friend Lorraine Kelly. So many women suffer. Some have been on antidepressants for years. But the professor said that was just papering over the cracks: “It’s not in your head, it’s in your hormones”, he told me. And I’m here to tell you that for me, it was in the hormones. The treatment worked within two days and I have been right as rain ever since.’
She now takes bioidentical hormones made from yams. ‘They are clear gels. I have two squeezes of the oestrogen gel on one leg and then a squeeze of the testosterone one on my other leg every morning. It dries within ten seconds and that’s it.’
Now Vorderman is feeling good and moving on. She deliberately shed business partnerships and even some friends who she felt were bringing her down. ‘There are people in your life who are flakey, shakey and have no problem bringing you bad news. They’ve gone!’
The passion for flying is still with her. It started when she was a child
MUM SAID, “I DON’T WANT TO GO THROUGH THAT. JUST KEEP ME OUT OF PAIN”...