CONUNDRUM

How can Countdown chiefs persuade ‘Queen of Mean’ Anne Robinson and maths wizard Rachel Riley to get along? It’s one huge (six consonants, three vowels)...

BELOVED by students and pensioners, Countdown has won an army of fans with its friendly competition to come up with the right words. But producers of the usually genial show fear the arrival of new host Anne Robinson has created a tricky conundrum.

Sources on set report an ‘awkward and uncomfortable atmosphere’ between the acid-tongued former Weakest

Link presenter and the programme’s glamorous maths whizz, Rachel Riley.

Staff at Media City studios in Salford claim that off-camera, there’s tension over Ms Robinson’s ‘rather grand ways’, which have earned her the nickname ‘Queen Anne’.

Resident lexicographer Susie Dent is said to have sided with Ms Riley in what is seen by some as a ‘young versus old’ divide.

An insider told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The tension between Rachel and Anne is being openly discussed. It is very much Rachel and Susie against Anne – a case of two camps. Lots of crew are discussing what is going on. Rachel and Susie don’t care much for Anne and her rather grand ways and things have become pretty uncomfortable. ‘Anne likes to do things her way, while Rachel doesn’t go along with how she operates. This has now led to little social interaction between them away from the cameras.’

Colleagues also claim 77-yearold Ms Robinson, who presented her first show in June, ‘doesn’t mix with anyone’ and brings her own stylist and make-up artist to the studios.

Oxford graduate Ms Dent, 56, who recently split from her husband of 20 years, Paul Atkins, is understood to be close friends with Ms Riley, 35, who went to the same university.

Ms Robinson has made no secret of her disdain for the young, woke brigade. Interviewed before she replaced Nick Hewer as host of the show, she said: ‘I am fed up with it… I just think we’re being told what to do by people who aren’t in a position to tell us what to do.’

Meanwhile, Ms Riley, who is pregnant with her second child with her partner, the former Strictly professional dancer Pasha Kovalev, has been targeted by hardLeft activists who have attacked her for campaigning against antisemitism in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn.

Ms Riley said of the social-media trolls: ‘They were so abusive. I’ve developed a thick skin but now I never see a lot of things, even nice stuff, which is a shame because I used to use Twitter to help children with maths homework.’

Channel 4 declined to comment last night.

‘They don’t care for Anne’s grand ways’