Cold calling ‘queen’ was Come Dine With Me ‘supermum’
The co-owner of shamed phone firm showed off home on TV competition
UNTIL now, Rachael Tooher-Rudd was perhaps best known as a former primary school teacher and “supermum” who once cavorted with a semi-naked waiter on the television reality show Come Dine With Me.
But The Sunday Telegraph can unmask Mrs TooherRudd as Britain’s “Cold Call Queen”, responsible with her husband for making the lives of millions an utter misery by bombarding them with nuisance calls.
Mrs Tooher-Rudd, 47, and husband Greg Rudd, 51, are joint owners of Keurboom Communications Ltd, which was given a record £400,000 fine for making 100million calls in 18 months.
Mr Rudd, the sole director of Keurboom, has a history of running questionable phone companies. One of his businesses, Allied Communications, was fined £1.3million in 2005 for running a premium-rate phone scam that was investigated by police. In both cases, Mr Rudd put the companies into administration, and so avoided paying the fines levied by the regulators.
Under company law, the directors are not personally liable for the fines, meaning regulators cannot touch the family home in Cambridge bought for £675,000 by Mr and Mrs Rudd in July 2013 or any other personal assets.
Mrs Tooher-Rudd is regis- tered as joint owner of Keurboom at Companies House, but was not involved in the day-to-day running of the business. She works two days a week as a counsellor at a primary school.
A year after Mr Rudd’s previous company was fined £1.3million, Mrs TooherRudd appeared on the Channel 4 show Come Dine With
Me, in which people compete for a £1,000 prize over who can cook the best meal.
On the 2006 programme, Mrs Tooher-Rudd, a keen amateur photographer who was introduced as a “supermum” (the couple have three children), said their home was filled with artefacts collected from exotic holidays in Malaysia and elsewhere. “It [the decor],” she explained, “is a bit like me: all over the place.”
She came last despite a brief appearance from Mr Rudd who bought the food and washed up but, at another contestant’s home, did have the pleasure of frolicking with a shirtless waiter, laid on for the occasion.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which investigated and fined Keurboom, said the company “showed scant regard for the rules, causing upset and distress to people unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of one of its 100million calls”.
The company made automated calls, drumming up business for road traffic accident claims and PPI compensation. People said they received multiple nuisance calls on the same day.
One victim said he had lost two close family members in car crashes and told of his upset at being asked by a robot voice if he had been involved in a collision.
The ICO has lobbied for a law change to make directors personally liable for fines. The law is due to change but it will come too late for the ICO to go after Mr Rudd. Mr and Mrs Rudd were unavailable for comment yesterday.