Countdown star Anne Robinson has denied any notion of a fall out between her and co-star Rachel Riley – but issued a devastating blow to the maths whizz. Anne quit the Channel 4 show for good in 2022 after only a year as host, and rumours of a feud began to circulate. But now Anne, 80, denies such a thing ever happened.

In a new interview with The Telegraph, she confessed: “It’s just a story. Rachel was a bit talkative when I was interviewing the contestants, but once we shut her up it was fine.” She added: “Anyway, I’m always tolerated because if I’ve got to be on set at two minutes to nine you’ll find me there at two minutes to nine. It’s allowed me to survive.”

She previously said working on the show was “exhausting”, explaining to Saga Magazine that the reason she quit was the long journeys to Manchester. She said: “It was genuinely that it was exhausting and I wasn’t seeing my grandchildren.

“Every other week I would go off to Manchester on the Sunday night, do five shows a day on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, get in the car and come back to sleep for most of Thursday. And I didn’t need it. Countdown was lovely to do but I hadn’t really considered the journeying and the physicality.”

However, Rachel said the atmosphere in the studio became more “fun” once Anne had gone, confessing to the Daily Star: “The viewing figure are the highest they’ve been in a decade, and we get really good letters from people enjoying it.

“Anne had her own style and Colin has a different one. It’s fun now. We can put the rude words up on the board again. We haven’t got a headmistress watching over us. Colin brings quite a lot of good energy. The viewers now can see it.”

Anne has now admitted she fancies a stint on Newsnight after quitting the game show. She told The Telegraph: “I’d like to front Newsnight, although I’m not being entirely serious. But it’s sad the programme has been ground down to a bunch of badly dressed people trying to plait sawdust.

“More realistically and since the BBC is in ever tighter knots over diversity I’d quite like to do Woman’s Hour once a week. A white female in her 81st year with no qualifications except her driving test but who asks awkward questions – might just allow me to qualify under the race and culture rules.”