Countdown’s Rachel Riley sets pulses racing in flirty red dress and killer heels

RACHEL Riley must have left people at home choking on their tea and biscuits when she put on a VERY leggy display on today's Countdown.

The 31-year-old boffin - who replaced curvy Carol Vorderman on the Channel 4 brain teaser show in 2009 - showed off her endless pins in a red skater dress with embroidered panels.

The side panels featured a flesh coloured detailing that could have tricked viewers in to thinking she was flashing even MORE flesh.

People at home were delighted by Rachel's outfit, tweeting: "OMG Rachel Riley is looking hot on Countdown today."

But it seems there are plenty of armchair critics out there - and a lot of them think they know a fair bit about fashion.

One man even urged her to ask producers to give her a smaller microphone as the battery pack interfered with the shape of her bum.

They tweeted: "@RachelRileyRR can't your sound people sort out smaller kit for you? The bumpy bits spoil the line of your btm [bottom] on Countdown .... ta 😊"

Rachel took divorced her husband in 2012, the same year she took part in Strictly Come Dancing.

Since then she has been in a relationship with her professional partner Pasha Kovalev.

But while now her life is a whirl of flashy dresses and celeb parties, when she first joined Countdown, she wasn't earning superstar money - despite reports she was bringing home £100,000.

She previously explained to The Telegraph: "I don’t think I was a higher-rate taxpayer [the threshold is £41,866] – no, not at all."

However, Rachel did admit to getting a hefty clothes budget for her telly outfits.

She added: "[When I started] I got a £10,000-a-year clothes budget from Countdown.

"I still get one – now it’s £14,000 a year. It’s a huge perk. It’s for my clothes that I wear on the series – we do about 225 episodes a year. If anything gets retired, we give it to charity.

"When I first started, I couldn’t even envisage spending that much money on clothes, but we had to film 15 episodes in one block, so I went shopping.

"It felt like that scene out of Pretty Woman where she has all those bags. It was very different, very alien – and a lot of fun."

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