1. Rachel Annabelle Riley was born on 11 January 1986 and is an English television presenter.
28 Facts About Rachel Riley
1. 2.
Rachel Riley was a contestant on the BBC celebrity dance show Strictly Come Dancing in 2013.
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Rachel Riley's mother is Jewish, and she has stated that her "family came over in the pogroms" from Tsarist Russia.
4.
From September 2013, Rachel Riley appeared in the eleventh series of the BBC One ballroom dancing programme Strictly Come Dancing with professional dancing partner and future husband Pasha Kovalev.
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Rachel Riley was eliminated in week six of the show, on 3 November 2013, after losing out in the dance-off against Abbey Clancy and Aljaz Skorjanec, who went on to win the series.
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From 2013 to 2014, Rachel Riley co-presented the Channel 5 programme The Gadget Show with Jason Bradbury.
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Rachel Riley worked on three series of the show and was later replaced by Amy Williams.
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In 2016, Rachel Riley was part of the three-person presenting team for ITV's six-part series, It's Not Rocket Science, billed by the network as an entertainment series celebrating science.
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Rachel Riley began dating her Strictly dance partner, Pasha Kovalev, soon after the show ended in December 2013.
10.
On 15 December 2019, Rachel Riley gave birth to a girl, the couple's first child.
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On 5 November 2021, Rachel Riley gave birth to their second daughter.
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Rachel Riley is a keen supporter of Manchester United, like her father, who was originally from Salford; in October 2010, Rachel Riley presented a programme on the club's television channel MUTV which featured a tour of their Trafford Training Centre in Carrington.
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Since 2016, Rachel Riley has worked with Grassroot Soccer, a global adolescent health organisation that leverages the power of football to equip young people with the life-saving information, services, and mentorship they need to live healthier lives.
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Rachel Riley is a Global Ambassador for the organisation and a member of its UK Board of Directors.
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In 2017, Rachel Riley was the co-winner with Idris Elba of the Rear of the Year award.
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In 2018, Rachel Riley began a campaign against the way the Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn had handled allegations of antisemitism.
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Rachel Riley said she decided to speak out after seeing "Israel is a racist endeavour" posters on London bus stops.
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In February 2019, according to The Times and i, Rachel Riley had been involved in talks to set up a centrist breakaway party from Labour.
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In November 2019, Rachel Riley posted an image on Twitter of herself wearing a shirt with an edited image of Corbyn carrying a sign bearing the caption "Jeremy Corbyn is a racist endeavour".
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The tweet was condemned by some for erasing the struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa, the original subject of the sign, to make a political point, with some users calling for Rachel Riley to be fired.
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Rachel Riley was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to Holocaust education and antisemitism awareness.
22.
In March 2024, Rachel Riley appeared on a panel the Swipe-Up Rise-Up conference to call on Jewish students to "be courageous" in calling out antisemitism.
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Rachel Riley subsequently deleted her post and said she was "sorry if this message was misunderstood".
24.
Rachel Riley stated that her comments were not meant to imply a link to Islamic extremism.
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Rachel Riley has visited schools to enthuse pupils on the "joys of applied maths, quantum mechanics and time travel and so on".
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In June 2019, Rachel Riley was criticised by environmental groups and accused of greenwashing for her promotion of the "future energy solutions" of Shell, an oil and gas company.
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In October 2021, Rachel Riley published her first book, At Sixes and Sevens: How to Understand Numbers and Make Maths Easy.
28.
Rachel Riley has made brief appearances in Dispatches, Britain's Brightest and 1001 Things You Should Know.