Carol Vorderman has somehow managed to make the disappearance of Jay Slater in Tenerife all about her after comparing the teenager’s situation to the time she ‘went missing’.

The Countdown legend, 63, recalled on her LBC show the time she ran away when Countdown host Richard Whiteley died in 2005, as she was racked with grief and just wanted to be alone and away from society.

Not quite the same as a 19-year-old lad vanishing on an 11-hour trek back to his hotel room in a foreign country, but here’s Vorderman’s story anyway:

‘Richard Whiteley died, and he died quite suddenly. Every day people would talk to me about him, even though I wasn’t with him. There was a great love between us, and I couldn’t cope, I just couldn’t cope.’

Vorderman said she ‘just didn’t know what to do’ and she ‘just had to disappear’:

‘I didn’t want anyone I knew around me, I just got in my car and I drove.

‘I eventually found a hotel and I didn’t have anything with me.

‘I had my purse, and just locked myself away then, switch my phone off, all of that. I just stayed in that room, just to get my thoughts together really.

‘So I do understand when people say that that’s their only option, I really do. There’s no shame about it, that’s why I’m telling this story for the first time. There’s no shame, everyone has those moments, I believe, at some point.’

Yeah, I really don’t think Jay Slater had some sort of disco biscuit-induced epiphany during his 11-hour hike and just decided to go be a hermit in a cave somewhere in Tenerife for the time being, but cheers for the story anyway, Carol. Then again, maybe she’s onto something? Could be that Carol Vorderman has just offered a theory that Jay Slater’s friends, family and the Spanish authorities haven’t even thought of yet. In fact I don’t even think the Jay Slater Facebook Group has come up with a theory like this one, and they’re completely mental! Could be worth looking into…?

Anyway, not to worry, because one of the lead investigators on the Madeleine McCann case has now offered his services to Jay Slater’s family. Surely they’ll take him up on his offer?