TV’s Countdown star Rachel Riley, the maths marvel from Southend, could soon be helping to raise substantial sums for her hometown charity, Peaceful Place.

Her mum, Celia, from Thorpe Bay, has just been appointed fundraising manager for the group, which cares for sufferers of early onset dementia.

And 23-year-old Rachel, a onetime Southend High School pupil who went on to graduate at Oxford, has pledged to help between recordings in Manchester of the highly-popular afternoon quiz show.

Rachel relaxed at the family home this weekend after another week’s episodes of Countdown was followed by a dash to Bristol to work with young students for a TV documentary.

She said she would do her best to help her 51-year-old mother, who told the Echo: “I have set myself a two-year target. I aim to raise at least half a million for Peaceful Place.” Celia – whose family moved to Essex from London when she was 15 – went to Seevic college in Thundersley. She is married to accountant Chris and they have a son, Alex, who is reading zoology at Nottingham and will soon head for Costa Rica to study leather-backed turtles.

“I have been raising money for various charities since I was a young girl,” Celia said. “Dementia is such a terrible, dreadful illness, especially when it indiscriminately affects younger people.

“In the past few days I have seen how much kindness and caring is given to some truly lovely people at the Peaceful Place day centre at St Luke’s Place, Rochford.

This has made me even more determined to raise substantial sums to help to adapt and fit out the bungalow the charity recently bought in Hockley and to develop the site next to it, for assisted living accommodation for young dementia sufferers.”