New Year’s honours list 2023: Countdown star Rachel Riley and This is England actor Stephen Graham honoured

Rachel Riley has been made an MBE in the New Year honour’s list for her efforts to raise awareness of the Holocaust and combat antisemitism.

The ‘Countdown’ star and mathematician, whose mother is Jewish, has long campaigned for better education around the Holocaust - and has been particularly vocal about the need to tackle antisemitism.

In January 2019, she was invited to a reception at Westminster for the Holocaust Education Trust, where she addressed some of the antisemitic abuse she had received on social media as a public figure. She has also worked on combatting online bullying with the Centre for Countering Digital Hate.

The 36-year-old, who graduated from Oxford University, appeared in the news a lot when the Labour Party was embroiled in an antisemitism row. Riley was particularly critical of the handling of alleged antisemitism within the party, as well as of Jeremy Corbyn’s conduct while he was leader of the opposition.

She became embroiled in an online row in 2019 after editing a photo of the Islington North MP at an anti-apartheid protest as she accused him of racism. This led to a libel case which Corbyn’s former aide, Laura Murray, lost in August - with the High Court ordering her to pay Riley £10,000 in damages.

Riley, who took over from Carol Vorderman as co-host of Channel 4’s Countdown in 2009 at the age of 22, was also awarded £50,000 in damages by a High Court judge after suing political blogger Mike Sivier for libel. The case was over an article which alleged she was a “serial abuser” and had bullied a teenager.

Also recognised in the New Year Honours list is Stephen Graham, who has been awarded an OBE for services to drama after a three-decade career.

The Merseyside-born actor has played a range of parts over the past few years, but is notorious for appearing criminals and police officers in various blockbuster Hollywood films and hit TV dramas. Recently, he starred alongside Jodie Comer in Channel 4’s pandemic TV drama Help, which this year won the International Emmy for TV movie/mini-series, and also appeared with Sean Bean in hard-hitting prison drama Time, which won best mini-series at the Bafta TV Awards. He also appeared in the hit police drama Line of Duty.

Graham is perhaps best known for his role of short-fused English nationalist Andrew “Combo” Gascoigne in the 2006 film This Is England. He also starred in the 2000 crime comedy film Snatch alongside Brad Pitt and Jason Statham, as well as 2019’s gangster epic The Irishman, where he played real-life mobster Anthony Provenzano alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.

He has spoken openly about mental wealth, crediting his wife Hannah Walters, who he recently co-starred with in Boiling Point, for helping him following a suicide attempt in his early 20s. The 49-year-old actor, who is mixed-race, has also spoken about suffering racist abuse on the streets of Liverpool.

In 2022, Graham starred in the hard-hitting ITV drama The Walk In, the musical film Matilda, comedic police series Code 404 and had a role in hit BBC show Peaky Blinders. In the upcoming months, he will appear in a biographical drama about competitive American swimmers, Young Woman And The Sea, and Second World War historical drama Blitz along with Saoirse Ronan.