I was very good at covering my drinking but I was dying inside
As she releases her memoir, writer and broadcaster Susannah Constantine tells HANNAH STEPHENSON why she decided to open up about her alcoholism
SUSANNAH CONSTANTINE, ‘It’ girl of the Nineties who dated royalty and partied with the likes of Elton John and Mick Jagger, is in reflective mode today, as we meet to discuss her memoir, Ready For Absolutely Nothing.
“My life has been a bit like Forrest Gump’s,” the writer and broadcaster muses. “I was always the girl at the back of the room, but witness to some amazing situations and encounters.”
We may recognise her from her 2018 Strictly appearance, when she was voted off in the first round with Anton Du Beke, or for her entertaining My Wardrobe Malfunction podcast, in which she interviews famous people about their fashion mishaps, or for her best-known show, What Not To Wear, which she co-presented with fellow fashionista Trinny Woodall in the Noughties.
Susannah, 60, acknowledges she has had a life of huge privilege among the upper classes and her story, filled with royal anecdotes and celebrity snippets, is an entertaining read.
She dated Princess Margaret’s son Viscount Linley (now 2nd Earl of Snowdon) in her 20s, enjoyed holidays in Mustique and intimate dinners as part of the royal party.
“Quite often, an evening with Princess Margaret meant dancing – invariably to her favourite song, Desmond Dekker’s Israelites. At the end of a dinner party we’d move to the drawing room, find a little space on the carpet, and dance like you might if you were alone in your kitchen with the morning radio,” Susannah writes. “I was very fond of her,” she says today. “I saw her as a mother figure.
“One of my great regrets is not keeping in touch with her after I split up with David. But she gave a dinner for
Sten [Bertelsen, Susannah’s husband] and I when we got engaged. That was so generous spirited.”
She has been married to Danish entrepreneur and businessman Sten, for nearly 28 years. They have three children and live in a sprawling West Sussex home within 127 acres of land.
As the daughter of upper crust, wealthy businessman Joseph and manic depressive mother Maryrose, an alcoholic who may have used booze to hide her mental state, it’s clear that privilege came at a price.
They used a ‘hands off’ approach, she recalls, dividing their time between their gentrified farmhouse in Lincolnshire, owned by the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, and a pied de terre in London. The young Susannah was largely looked after by staff and was later packed off to boarding school.
As she grew up, she mixed in rich circles and in her 20s lived the ‘It’ girl life, enjoying lavish Caribbean holidays and hanging out with movers and shakers, from celebrity photographers to racing drivers. Yet she realised while writing the book that growing up in huge privilege only set her a goal for marriage.
“I was completely unprepared for anything other than getting married. I could have gone to university but my father said to me, ‘Darling, don’t be silly, you’ll be much better off learning how to make a good beef wellington’.
“I wasn’t independent financially or mentally. I didn’t have my own opinions on anything. I was being brought up to become like my mother. But I’ve learned to be very resourceful, push the envelope and do my own thing.”
The memoir, however, features little about her career in fashion journalism, the TV show What Not To Wear which made her and friend and co-presenter Trinny Woodall into household names, or other work-based achievements.
But she does chart her alcoholism, which began when her TV partnership with Trinny Woodall ended and there was a big void to fill. At her worst, she was drinking a bottle or two a night and wouldn’t venture out socially without a drink first. By 2012, her drinking had become a solitary activity.
The catalyst came during a break in Cornwall with some cousins, when she blacked out, fell over and wet herself on the way back to her accommodation. The problem was fully exposed. Returning to Sussex, she sought help.
“I was highly functioning on the outside. I was very good at covering it and continuing and putting my family first but I was dying inside. That’s a very solitary place to be.”
She continues: “During lockdown, I went public about being an alcoholic because I was reading about how many women were suffering and the response from
that was so overwhelming.”
Given her mother’s history, she still doesn’t know if she could have avoided becoming an alcoholic.
“I’ve always assumed it’s a hereditary disease and if you have it, it’s not something that can be avoided. My mum and my grandmother were alcoholics but was my mum an alcoholic because she was severely bipolar – or was she selfmedicating when she was down to try to help herself feel better with alcohol?”
Her husband, she says, was amazing. “The smartest thing he did was not to try and stop me, because he knew he had no power over my alcoholism. He was there emotionally and physically I’m so grateful to him.
“I regret my drinking, but I look at the positives that have come out of it, how I conduct my life today and how I can give the tools of AA and what I’ve learned there to my children on how to deal with difficult things in life.”
She’s been in recovery for nearly nine years and still goes to meetings, which she says are very important, but has booze in the house and doesn’t mind others drinking around her.
Her children, Joe, 23, Esme, 21 and 19-yearold Cece, she says, were aware of it.
The morning after she blacked out, she sat them down and told them she was an alcoholic. “Esme said, ‘Yes, mum, you can be a bit embarrassing. Cece, was very quiet and told me I needed to get help.”
Her family and career have provided her with the raison d’etre she always needed to move forward.
“I am privileged and there’s not much point in going there but the situations I am most comfortable in have always been when I had purpose.”
An evening with Princess Margaret meant dancing – invariably to her favourite song, Desmond Dekker’s Israelites