Carol Vorderman ended her eponymous live radio show on BBC Radio Wales in tears as she remembered her late mother Jean on Saturday.
The presenter, 59, was overwhelmed with emotion as she read a Mother’s Day poem in honour of the annual celebration, nearly three years after her parent passed away following a battle with terminal cancer aged 88.
‘I’m going to have to go now because I’m getting all upset. My heart will be with her tomorrow’, the host bravely told her listeners before going off air.
Emotional: Carol Vorderman ended her eponymous live radio show on BBC Radio Wales in tears as she remembered her late mother Jean on Saturday (pictured in 2017)
The former Countdown star kicked off the special segment by reading a message by a 10-year-old.
Carol shared: ‘When I was a baby, my mum looked after me, she change my dirty nappy every time I had a wee.
‘When I was wide awake and wouldn’t go to sleep, she would gently rock me until there was no peep.
‘I love her very much because she is my friend and when I need some cash all my money she will lend. Please tell her that I really care.’
Overwhelmed: The presenter, 59, read a Mother’s Day poem in honour of the annual celebration, nearly three years after her parent passed away (pictured in 2018)
Tragic: Jean – also known as Edwina – passed away in June 2017 following a battle with terminal cancer aged 88 (pictured in 2009)
Moments after she finished the poem, the maths whizz admitted: ‘Ah, you’re gonna start me off’, before her co-star Nathan Sussex attempted to comfort her.
Revealing why she grew emotional, the media personality said: ‘i just want to say, I lost my mum three years ago and she lived with me for over thirty years. And I loved her very much. My heart will be with her tomorrow.
‘I’m going to have to go now because I’m getting all upset. But stay safe most of all, sending love to everyone,’ Carol concluded her weekly programme.
The maths whizz’s mother Jean – whose real name was Edwina – had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in March 2017 – just three months before she died.
She had battled three different forms of cancer over the last 12 years, with Carol previously revealing her parent had been treated for skin cancer and kidney cancer, as well as having an ovarian tumour removed.
Carol has always spoken of the close relationship she shared with her mother, previously shared that it was Jean who encouraged her to join Countdown.
In an interview with The Sun from 2007, the TV star recalled: ‘She spotted an advertisement in the local paper asking for a girl who was good at maths to help present a new TV show, Countdown.
‘She sent in an application for me and I ended up with the job.’
Touching: ‘I’m going to have to go now because I’m getting all upset. My heart will be with her tomorrow’, the host bravely told her listeners before going off air (pictured in 2017)
In June 2018, Carol confessed she struggled to cry for a year following Jean’s death. She said on Lorraine: ‘People don’t talk about it. I’ve done a lot of thinking over the past year, and my mum and I had a truly unique relationship.
‘I took responsibility for my mum from when I was 21 and employed her. The bond between her and me was incredibly close, so when people said to be before she died ”what are you going to be like when she passes away?” I would say ”I can’t talk about it!”
She added: ‘I didn’t cry, and I don’t really, I don’t really think about her. I’m here to talk about it, because it can’t just be me who goes through it, we could not have a closer bond, and I couldn’t have been a better daughter.
‘Why when she passed hasn’t it come. It’s not every day and it’s not all the time and I don’t understand it.
Emotional block: ‘In June 2018, Carol confessed she struggled to cry for a year following Jean’s death on Lorraine (pictured)
‘I was a little bit angry at one point, obviously not angry at her, whether it was that genuinely I don’t know the answer and I don’t know whether you’re meant to.
‘Some people say I cried every day for three years, but I wonder if the truth is that many people don’t. If I moved somewhere it was my mum, Katie and Cameron [my kids].
‘Two weeks ago when I was thinking about the anniversary of her death it hit me like a wave I couldn’t stop crying for a day, it’s like a tsunami of grief who came at me, and then it just stopped and I woke up the next morning and carried on.’
‘I have a freedom that I didn’t have before, it was a joy to look after her, I’m not lying but anyone with an elderly parent [would understand], she wasn’t housebound but she made herself a little bit that way, she was my everyday.’