The TV celebrity Carol Vorderman left herself only one world of renown to conquer yesterday - that of becoming, as John Lennon said of the Beatles, more famous than Jesus Christ.

Ms Vorderman proclaimed herself "more interesting than Shakespeare" after one of her learning aids for children beat the older author in a list of bestselling school textbooks.

The result was a comeback for the presenter of Countdown and other TV shows after a bruising encounter with the Bard two years ago.

In a celebrity version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, she lost the chance of winning £250,000 by failing to recognise Sir Toby Belch as a character in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

Ms Vorderman, who has an IQ of 154 and a master's degree in engineering, hit back by declaring that she had always found Shakespeare "dull as ditchwater". The academic author and commentator John Sutherland said this remark had earned her "eternal fame in the dictionary of great philistinism" alongside the industrialist Henry Ford ("History is bunk"), the novelist Kingsley Amis ("Filthy Mozart") and the ex-world chess champion Bobby Fischer ("Girls are a waste of time").

Other commentators pointed out that even her phrase, from the Dickens novel Our Mutual Friend: "He'd be sharper than a serpent's tooth if he wasn't as dull as ditchwater", drew inspiration from "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is/ to have a thankless child" in Shakespeare's King Lear.

Now Ms Vorderman's volume Maths and English Made Easy has been placed first in a bestseller list of school textbooks published in Bookseller magazine. A total of 77 book versions of Shakespeare plays set in school exams came fourth in the list.

Second to Ms Vorderman was a book of school assessment papers by JM Bond, third an English course by John and Liz Soars.

Ms Vorderman's earlier How Maths Works is claimed to have sold more than a million copies. Videos to teach multiplication tables have billed her as the "mistress of maths".

Yesterday she said: "This latest bestseller list seems to prove my point. More schools find my books more interesting than Shakespeare."

Carol Vorderman

Born Leeds

Age 41

Path to advancement Mother persuaded her to apply for job on Countdown

Wealth £2m a year, 20th top-earning woman in UK

Now playing On ITV show Better Homes

In her own words "I wouldn't mind if he told all, so long as he says I was good in bed."

William Shakespeare

Born Stratford-on-Avon

Age 438

Path to advancement Wrote two long poems and 154 sonnets to aristocratic patrons. Got job as strolling player, wrote 37 plays

Wealth Enough to buy big house in Stratford

Now playing All over the world

In his own words The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action

(Sonnet 129)

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and Clarifications column, Thursday 27 June 2002

We attributed to
Miss Vorderman the claim that she was "more interesting than
Shakespeare". Miss Vorderman dissociates herself from the quote, which
came from a news agency.