Rachel Riley

Television presenter and campaigner on Holocaust education and antisemitism

Rachel Riley
Occupation	Television presenter
Known for	Co-presenter of Channel 4's Countdown; campaigning on Holocaust education and antisemitism

Rachel Riley (Rachel Annabelle Riley MBE) is a British television presenter. She has co-presented Channel 4's Countdown as the programme's "numbers expert" since 2009, and appears in the same role on the comedy spin-off 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. She was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2023 New Year Honours, listed as "Campaigner. For services to Holocaust Education". On 4 December 2021 she replied to a Board of Deputies of British Jews video about the Oxford Street Chanukah bus incident with the words "Hats off @GnasherJew".

Career

According to the City of London Corporation, which granted her the Freedom of the City of London on 22 October 2025, Riley is best known for Countdown and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. The Corporation also recorded that she has hosted Channel 5's The Gadget Show and ITV's It's Not Rocket Science, has been a guest host on Scala Radio, and has presented Fantasy Football Club and Friday Night Football on Sky Sports. It described her as supporting work to involve young people, in particular girls, in STEM subjects, and as having championed National Numeracy initiatives. Her book At Sixes and Sevens was, in the Corporation's account, aimed at improving adults' maths skills and was "inspired by many parents reaching out to her during COVID lockdowns". In evidence reported when she sued Laura Murray, The Guardian recorded that she had studied mathematics at the University of Oxford.

Campaigning

The City of London Corporation said she was nominated for the Freedom by the Lord Mayor, Alastair King, and by the alderman Tim Levene "in recognition of her outstanding contributions to Holocaust education and antisemitism campaigning work". It wrote that she had been "at the forefront of a campaign against antisemitism after being targeted on social media" and had "delivered a speech at the Holocaust Educational Trust in Parliament, which was subsequently published in The Times". Those descriptions are the Corporation's. The official honours list records the MBE as being for services to Holocaust education.

Oxford Street bus reporting

On 4 December 2021, after the Board of Deputies posted a video calling on the BBC to "correct its report and apologise" over its coverage of the Oxford Street Chanukah bus incident, Riley replied: "Hats off @GnasherJew". The tweet is recorded on the page for Gnasher Jew.

Civil claims

Riley has brought successful libel claims in the High Court. The two cases summarised here are separate actions, against different defendants, and are not criminal proceedings.

Riley v Murray

On 20 December 2021 Mr Justice Nicklin gave judgment in Riley v Murray [2021] EWHC 3437 (QB). According to The Guardian, Riley sued Laura Murray over a tweet posted after Jeremy Corbyn, then leader of the Labour Party, was struck by an egg while visiting a mosque in March 2019. The paper reported that Riley had posted a screenshot of a tweet by the columnist Owen Jones about an attack on the former BNP leader Nick Griffin, adding the words "good advice", and that Murray later tweeted that Riley had said "Corbyn deserves to be violently attacked because he is a Nazi" and was "as dangerous as she is stupid". It reported that Riley told the court she had been sarcastic, had not called Corbyn a Nazi, and that Murray's tweet had caused serious harm to her reputation. Murray, described by the paper as having been stakeholder manager in Corbyn's office and later the Labour Party's head of complaints, argued that what she had tweeted was true and reflected her honestly held opinions.

Nicklin J had held at an earlier hearing that Murray's tweet was defamatory. The Guardian reported that he concluded it meant Riley had "publicly stated" that Corbyn "deserved to be violently attacked", that by doing so she had shown herself to be a "dangerous and stupid person" who "risked inciting unlawful violence", and that people should not "engage with her". In the December 2021 judgment he held that Riley had demonstrated that the tweet caused serious harm to her reputation, and awarded her £10,000 in damages. He said she was entitled to "vindication".

Riley v Sivier

On 16 November 2022 Mrs Justice Steyn gave judgment in Riley v Sivier [2022] EWHC 2891 (KB), following a trial on 18–20 July 2022. The claim concerned an article first published on 26 January 2019 by the blogger Mike Sivier on his website voxpoliticalonline.com, under the headline "Serial abuser Rachel Riley to receive 'extra protection' – on grounds that she is receiving abuse". Mr Justice Nicklin had earlier determined the single meaning of the words complained of: that Riley had "engaged upon, supported and encouraged a campaign of online abuse and harassment of a 16 year old girl, conduct which has also incited her followers to make death threats towards her", and that by doing so she was a "serial abuser" and had acted hypocritically, recklessly and obscenely. The judgment refers to the girl by the pseudonym Rose. Defences of truth and honest opinion were struck out and that striking-out was upheld by the Court of Appeal; a public interest defence went to trial.

Steyn J held that the article had caused serious harm to Riley's reputation, that Sivier's belief that publication was in the public interest "was not reasonable", that he "had no reasonable grounds for making the factual allegations that he did, which misrepresented the evidential picture", and that the article "was wholly unbalanced". The public interest defence therefore failed and the claim succeeded. The judge awarded £50,000 in damages and granted an injunction requiring Sivier to remove the article and not to repeat it or words to similar effect.

See also

• Gnasher Jew
• Oxford Street Chanukah bus incident
• Board of Deputies of British Jews
• Holocaust Educational Trust