Interview, The Observer, 12 Oct 2014

• More than other subjects there’s a myth that you have to be an absolute genius to be good at maths and to enjoy it, so I think it’s less accessible for people. Even the word “maths” makes people screw their face up.

• I see the maths face quite a lot. It’s the blind panic that they have to do maths in front of people. It’s just fear and dread. There’s definitely a maths face – try it on someone.

• I’m really interested in male and female brains and whether female brains or male brains are better at maths. You sit men and women down and give them a maths test and they will do fairly equally. Then you set up the same test, but with different people, and make them tick a box to say whether they are a man or a woman, and the women do significantly worse in the maths test than they did previously in a group set.

• When you tell people that you are studying maths at uni, they are like, “Oh …”. Especially a blonde Essex girl.

• Men are not as scared to lose and they’ve got a lot more time to devote to, not exactly pointless things, but to being good at things like Countdown.