Countdown faces axe as show owner fights for Vorderman

The future of Channel 4 show Countdown was thrown into doubt today when the businessman who owns the rights to the quiz threatened to pull the plug.

Presenter Carol Vorderman has quit the show because she claims she was told to take or leave a 90 per cent pay cut. Her decision came only two days after current host Des O'Connor announced he was leaving.

Now Belgian businessman Marcel Stellman, who owns the rights, said he was furious over the way Vorderman had been treated. He said: "I control the format and without the format there is no show. I am upset for Carol. If I am Mr Countdown, she is Mrs Countdown. She is delightful and loyal and cannot be treated in any other way than respect.

"If they don't come up with things they have promised in writing, and are now being dealt with by my solicitors, from now on I don't wish to talk about the future." Vorderman, who has worked on the show since it started 26 years ago, presented by Richard Whiteley, said she had offered to accept a pay cut of onethird, in line with the show's 33 per cent budget cut.

She said she was told by Channel 4 daytime commissioning editor Helen Warner that the programme would survive without her 'just like it did when Richard Whiteley died". Vorderman added: "All I could think of was 'I can't leave' but I also realised they wanted me out. I had no alternative but to go."

O'Connor quit last week, 18 months after taking over the host's chair.