Sky’s the limit for birthday girl Carol Vorderman

TELLY personality Carol Vorderman turned 56 on Christmas Eve.

But it’s fair to say she isn’t slowing down.

If anything, the former Queen of Countdown is the busiest she’s ever been.

Not content with heading Down Under to take part in I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, next spring, she’ll be taking off to fly solo around the world.

“I’m a menopausal mama — I’m having the time of my life,” laughs Carol.

“I am doing a lot more adventurous stuff and it is the sense of adventure that I liked about I’m A Celebrity.

“It is a very free time in my life.

“I’ve got so much to do. I’ve got the next five years planned out. I’m so excited about everything I am doing right now.

“I want to do more flying, more air shows, more partying, more adventures.

“I used to have a to-do list for decades, but they were things I had to do rather than things I wanted to do.

“Now, I have a list and everything on it, I want to do. That’s a big difference.”

Two years ago, Carol quit Loose Women to prepare for flying solo around the world.

She’ll cover 29,000 miles in three months, though her departure had to be postponed for a year to allow her plane — named for pioneering 1930s aviator Mildred Bruce — to be modified.

“I start in April, and it will take three months,” says the maths mastermind, who owes her surname to the Dutch father who left home when she was just three weeks old.

“Hopefully, if I’m safe and well, I’ll be the ninth woman to ever fly solo around the world.

“The flight was delayed because it took months to get modifications approved on Mildred.

“I was heartbroken, but I needed new fuel tanks to increase the distance she can travel in one hop.

“It’s in case I have to divert to alternate airfields in remote areas should the weather be so bad that I can’t land at the intended destination.”

Carol’s quest will be shown on Five and she says: “I’m looking forward to spending three months virtually on my own because I’ve always had a busy home life and I never had time to myself.

“It will be like having a holiday, but there will be a film crew on the ground and I’ll be talking to air traffic control and other pilots.

“It’s not like I’m trekking through the wilderness by myself for three months.”

Carol’s fascination with flying began at an early age when, aged nine, she watched Concorde’s maiden flight and decided to become a pilot.

“I wanted to be an RAF pilot when I was younger,” she explains.

“I lived in a small town in Wales and was a ‘free school meals’ kid at a comprehensive, and I got to Cambridge University to study engineering a year early.

“There was a University Air Squadron that students could join if they wanted to become pilots, so off I went to sign up.

“I desperately wanted to join the RAF as a pilot, but they said I couldn’t join because sadly, back then, they wouldn’t accept women in that position.

“Things are very different now and I know a number of incredible female RAF pilots, but that was the end of that for me for 30 or so years.

“We were a poor family, so flying lessons were out of the question and after I graduated I went off into another life.

“It wasn’t until 2011 when I met a woman in her late 60s who told me she hadn’t learned to fly until she was 50 that my perspective shifted. I realised I had the time and the money.

“I booked a six-week course at a flight school in San Diego. Every time I landed, it was with a huge smile.

“When I returned home, I bought myself a little plane and continued lessons.

“I completed my first solo flight three years ago, live on ITV’s This Morning, and I finally got my Private Pilot’s Licence in December, 2013.

“I haven’t many regrets in my life,” adds Carol.

“I’m 55 now and there are some things I think: ‘God, I wish I hadn’t done that.’

“In terms of where I feel I missed out, it’s coming to this so late because of the joy I could have had from flying all those years ago.”