SUSANNAH REW RITES THE RULES
Thestar has altered her clothes and her life
As the hosts of reality series What Not
to Wear, besties Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine were household names in the noughties – and naughty they most certainly were, with their blunt critiques and trademark “boob grabs”.
Plummy, posh and very bossy, the pair were shameless in dissecting the fashion faux pas of middle-aged, middleclass England. Their keen eye for frumpiness, dumpiness and mutton-dressed-as-lamb was a joy to behold.
But when Woman’s Day turns up at Susannah’s splendid Sussex mansion, she answers the door in an ancient T-shirt stretched tight across her ginormous bosom, plus trackie bottoms and scruffy jandals.
When we wonder aloud whether we’ve come on the wrong day, she breezily answers, “Oh, I don’t care how I look now I’m buried here in the country. On the rare occasions when I’m persuaded to go to London, I always wear the same loose trousers and silk shirt, but even then Trinny swears at me and orders me to wash my effing hair.”
Yet despite her wilfully downbeat attire, Susannah, now 55, looks exactly how we remember her when she was the perfect curvaceous foil to Trinny’s lean angularity. The intervening years have been kind and she remains a head-turner.
“I have a vast wardrobe of glamorous clothes I don’t fit into, stored in a very damp cellar,” she says matter-offactly. “Seriously, there are toads hopping about. I only ever go down there when one of my daughter Esme’s friends wants to borrow something tiny with a label.”
Squinting down at her cleavage, she adds, “I’m now a size 12 on the bottom and a 14 to 16 on top. These girls just expand and expand, so I usually get a size 16 and have it altered. Still, my husband’s rather fond of them.”
We’re here to talk to Susannah – who first came to public attention in the UK for her affairs with Princess Margaret’s son Viscount Linley and cricketer Imran Khan – about her debut novel, Afterthe Snow, A a surprisingly tender tale of an 11-year-old growing up in a rambling old house in the 1960s, much as the author herself did.
Newchapter
“This is the first thing I have ever done on my own,” she says proudly. “I’ve always had Trinny to bully and chivvy me because I’m fundamentally a lazy person, but now I’m responsible to nobody, I find myself getting up at 2am to write and working straight through until breakfast.
“There is a lot of me in the book. I was quite a lonely child because my sister was six years older, so I relied on the company of pets and my pony. When I was writing, it was fascinating to interpret adults’ behaviour, whether relating to alcohol or adultery, through the eyes of a child. There’s so much room for misinterpretation, yet there’s a real clarity to a child’s vision as well.”
Susannah is already working on the sequel, fitting her writing around her family, including her handsome husband, Danish entrepreneur Sten Bertelsen, and their three children, Joe, 18, Esme, 16, and CeCe, 14.
“I love being at home, watching the kids come and go, and seeing them eat the contents of the fridge with their friends,” she smiles. “It’s another legacy of my own childhood – I revel in being in a busy house full of people.”
The main character of Susannah’s novel is named after Esme, whose godfather just happens to be Sir Elton John. The author explains, “Elton is a really great friend and he always sends us white orchids on our birthdays.”
Esme doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life just yet, while Joe is set to study marine biology at university and CeCe is showing literary leanings.
Susannah says, “The one thing I really want for my children is to be themselves and not care what other people think. If they have the confidence to break the mould, they will do anything they set their minds to.”
What Not to Wear and its successor Trinny& Susannah
Undress were all about selfesteem, she insists.
“We were honest and upfront, but we were never brutal. We’d never criticise a woman’s body or anything she couldn’t change about
herself. I loved the psychology of the show. It was wonderful to watch women blossom before our eyes because they had been stripped of the layers they’d been hiding inside.”
We can’t help but ask what, in her professional opinion, Susannah’s current outfit conveys about her own inner life. “That I’m a slob, but a very happy one!” she grins. “That I am relaxed in my own skin and content with who I am. Yes, it’s nice to dress up occasionally, but I don’t care about clothes and it’s wonderful not to have to.”
Since deciding to end their TV careers in 2008, Susannah and Trinny, now 53, are no longer joined at the hip, but they remain bosom buddies, chatting on the phone at least twice a week.
“Now we’re not partners on screen, we have the space to be friends,” says Susannah. “We talk about life, kids and our projects, but never about fashion. It’s an age-and-stage thing. thi Once O you find fi d your own style and know what suits you, it’s easy to put together a look without any of the agonising. In my case, I just pull on what I wore yesterday.”
Trial& horror!
Trinny is now in a relationship ship with art collector Charles Saatchi, the former husband and of celebrity chef Nigella Lawson, and runs a fashion on and beauty website, where she tests outlandish cosmetic procedures. These include e “vampire facials”, where a client’s own blood is injected into their face, and micro-needling, where tiny nails are rolled over the body to assist weight loss.
Susannah explains, “She’s already beautiful and doesn’t need to do any of these things, but women trust her and the fact that she’s tried these things gives her verdict added integrity.”
Susannah herself tends to steer clear of the internet, admitting to feeling “very bruised” after Instagram photographs of CeCe holding up a dead duck, her face smeared with blood to mark her first kill, went viral, attracting a storm of criticism.
“That was a really hard time,” says Susannah. “I was proud of her and I still am – she shot the duck, then we took it home and ate it. It’s important that children know where their food comes from.”
Alongside her writing, Susannah hopes that she may one day return to primetime television. She’s excited about a pilot of Trannyand
Susannah (yes, it’s really called that), a makeover show for “people who don’t fit in”, which she would co-present with transgender DJ Stephanie Hirst.
“My son thought up the name of the show – isn’t it great?” she enthuses. “It would tap into the current conversation about gender fluidity.” However, it’s her next novel that Susannah is currently focused on.
“I itch to write,” she says. “It’s all in my head and it needs to come out. Whatever happens after that is in the lap of the gods.”
At this, Susannah gives a contented sigh and looks out over her gardens, a swimming pool and a vista of rolling countryside. “I’m a homebody,” she smiles. “I have a fabulous family, I’m where I was meant to be. I’m 55 years old and I’ve finally grown up – I never thought I’d say this. It’s the most wonderful feeling.”
I itch to write. It’s all in my head and it needs out’ to come