Countdown legend Carol Vorderman has revealed she has five boyfriends which she keeps “on rotation”.

Speaking to former BBC RuPaul’s Drag Race and Strictly Come Dancing star Michelle Visage on her podcast, Carol, 62, said it was a “system which I’ve had for 10 years.”

When she was asked if she had a boyfriend, Carol said: “No, I'm having the best time.

“I've spoken about this once. I have a system which I've had for 10 years. They're called 'special friends'.

The Argus:

"I spoke a couple of months ago about having 'special friends' and it was like, again, the world had fallen in for some people but actually what I found was there was an awful lot of women who said 'I'd never thought about it like this'.

“This whole assumption: 'Have you got a partner yet? Have you got a man?' Well, no actually I've got five'."

She added: “You know, everyone is single. It's a happy place. I hasten to add I'm not into one-night stands.

“The language around a woman of my generation is that if you had more than one partner when you got married you were this you were that.

"Everything was derogatory about a woman, that was the environment I was growing up in. It was like 'she's desperate', everything was judgmental.

"Well, you can take all that and you can throw it out the window, that's my polite way of saying it.

"But there's no harm being done. It's a happy place to live. The only thing I was sold when I was young was a fairytale with a poor girl meets a prince, they get married and they lived happily ever after."