I’m much happier when I’m below the radar ...
COUNTDOWN’S SUSIE DENT TALKS TO LAUREN TAYLOR AS SHE PREPARES TO TOUR THE UK WITH HER PODCAST CO-STAR GYLES BRANDRETH
TV’S favourite wordsmith Susie Dent found herself with a podcast hit when she joined forces with Gyles Brandreth for Something Rhymes With Purple.
Their shared passion for words and language proved so popular that they are now touring the country with a live show.
And for someone so private, Susie has a lot of Twitter followers – 1.1 million people who eat up her “word of the day” posts.
The 56-year-old, who has two daughters – Lucy, 21, and Thea, 13 – is a self-confessed worrier though. She worried about joining Twitter in 2014, feeling anxious that she was “too sensitive” to be a public figure on social media, and feared she would fret over negative comments.
“Predominantly, I’ve just had loveliness on Twitter,” she says now. “That’s been quite an important life lesson to me over the course of my career, really. But that self-consciousness was there very early on. I think when it’s that embedded, it’s quite hard.”
She adds: “I live in my head the entire time, too much probably.
“I’m always playing out these narratives in my head, I’ve always been a daydreamer. As a child, I would go off on my bike down to a little stream quite near us, I’d just sit on the bridge and stay there for hours, just staring at the water. I’ve always enjoyed my own company.”
She has learned to pick her battles when it comes to worrying and has taken one life lesson from the late Queen.
“Famously, she talked about taking the long view, and I think that really helps. Thinking, will I be worrying about this in a year’s time? If the answer is no, then you can take a second look and think, OK, I need to get a grip here. But I think the worry gene is in my family.”
Susie is marking 30 years on Channel 4’s Countdown this year, but does not consider herself a TV personality.
“That’s not who I am at all. I am a lexicographer and an ethnologist (someone who studies different societies and cultures), who happens to be on a TV programme that I love,” she says.
She was working for Oxford English Dictionary when she was approached for the job on the dictionary corner of Countdown in 1992, but says being in front of the camera was not a natural fit for her personality at first.
“The evidence is still there on YouTube, unfortunately, I look absolutely terrified!” she says with a laugh. “I’m very much happier when I’m below the radar, rather than above it.
“I think that’s been one of the good developments in telly over the last decade – authenticity is now really appreciated.
“So I think people really do feel much more able to be themselves. That wasn’t always the case.”
Surrey-born Susie was known for being quiet and studious when she attended her Catholic girls’ school in Oxford.
“I loved disappearing into my homework when I got home, I’m sure that’s very strange, but it became my oasis as well, really,” she says. “I just loved words, I just stared at words all the time.”
And while Susie was desperate to be nominated as a sports captain or a prefect, it was announced she would be chief librarian instead.
“They were looking at me thinking, ‘Yep, that’s it!’ Now I think it’s the coolest job in the world, but at the time there was still a sense of shame about it, which is really sad looking back.”
Her new book, An Emotional Dictionary, is a reference book of words to help describe our emotions – exploring the history of those you will already know, to some you will not, like lonesomefret, which means the sadness of being on your own for too long.
Susie thinks it is a handy word to have for a pandemic.
“If those years have taught us anything, it’s that we don’t always have the words for our emotions,” she says.
“Genuinely, I do love solitude, it recharges me. Cinema is a really good immersion therapy for me. “Where you’re just totally taken outside yourself and the world is suspended for a little while.
“And thanks to Gyles Brandreth that I’ve really got into poetry. He kept saying to me to read a poem before bed and it’s amazing because it’s often quite short.
“It’s kind of complete in itself, but it’s also incomplete. So when you go to bed, you can ponder what that poem meant. It’s a lovely way to drift off to sleep.”
Countdown, and its comedy spin-off 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, is a natural fit for Susie’s competitive nature, though.
“There’s a lot to be done” in those 30-second challenges, and “adrenaline kicks in every time,” she says.
“I’ve got a dictionary corner guest next to me, who I’m trying to impress as well. I’m trying to preempt what the contestants might come up with.
“I do think now that there’s more celebration of people who really immerse themselves in topics.
“‘Geek’ has become a bit of a fashionable label for people who really know their stuff – and I think that’s absolutely brilliant, because it was an insult for a long time.”
It’s thanks to Gyles Brandreth that I’ve really got into poetry... Susie, pictured with her touring pal Gyles