TV personality and former Countdown host Carol Vorderman has opened up about her love life - which involves dating multiple people, she has revealed.
The 61-year-old appeared on Loose Women this week and was praised by the show's panelists when she spoke of her attitude towards relationships and admitted she feels “free” living on her own and is so used to her own space now she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Read more: Inside the Welsh coastal retreat Carol Vorderman says is her 'dream home'
Sharing the thought process behind her decision for no-strings relationships, Carol, who has recently appeared on Channel 4's hit show Celebrity Gogglebox, said to Charlene White, Katie Piper, Brenda Edwards and Nadia Sawalha: “What it is, when you’re growing up as a young girl, you’re told that you should have one partner, and for the vast majority of people that suits."
She added: "But then as we all have women friends, girlfriends - if you like - who are older, a lot of people who are married go, ‘I wouldn’t mind living in a separate house actually’."
The decision for an unattached romance also stems from her upbringing with her single mother, Jean.
“I do feel free. Having a single parent in the Sixties, my mum remarried my wonderful stepfather - and she kept leaving him. So we were there one night in a lovely house, then we were in the circus. It was an anxious way to live.”
However, the experience it seems made her a stronger person for it. She said: ‘I think what it gave me is, ‘I can survive.’
“I saw my mum go through quite a lot – not by my stepfather by the way – but others putting her down because she was a single parent. So now it’s a little bit of, ‘If I bother you, I don’t care.’”
Despite her enthusiasm towards single life, Carol has been married twice before.
Firstly to Royal Navy officer and former rugby player Christopher Mather, who she tied the knot with in 1985 at the age of 24. It was short-lived as the couple divorced a year later.
Her second husband was management consultant Patrick King to whom she was married from 1990 to 2000. The couple share two children, Katie, 31, and 25-year-old Cameron. Her most recent relationship was with journalist Des Kelly, from whom she split in 2007.
And after two marriages, it seems Carol is done walking down the aisle and says she is happy to be single forever and, according the The Mirror, the thought of sharing her life with someone else again makes her feel “positively sick”.
Though that hasn't stopped the TV icon, who grew up in Prestatyn, from dating multiple "special friends".
She said: "I'm very happy, I have no complaints. I am not dating anyone, I have special friends. Special friends. Plural."
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