Rachel Riley takes career break due to Irritable Vowel Syndrome

Channel 4’s resident Countdown numbers genius and letters beauty has today announced a break from TV due to crippling Irritable Vowel Syndrome.

The syndrome is suffered silently by thousands and has taken its toll on the popular maths expert with doctors blaming the exposure suffered on the afternoon show.

“It all started with light attacks when people would write ‘Rachael’ on birthday cards when I was a young girl” says Riley. “The extra ‘e’ was even worse than ‘Rach’, if you can believe that.”

“Early schooldays were very hard, the chorus to Old MacDonald still gives me nightmares, so I focused almost entirely on numbers.”

When fame hit, Rachel covered up her vowel pain, however she recently suffered an acute attack due to her work on a late night comedy spin off.

“Doubling up the workload with the 8 out of 10 Cats show proved too much” she says. “Not only irritable vowels, but inconsonants too.”

“I think it was working so closely with Jimmy Carr. He really is an absolute Count.”