Self-mocking wit of ‘the dumpy one with Trinny’

Ready For Absolutely Nothing

Susannah Constantine Michael Joseph £20 ★★★★☆

Best known as the copresenter of the early 2000s makeover show What Not To Wear, on which she and Trinny Woodall became famous for grabbing their subjects’ boobs, Susannah Constantine no longer dictates to the nation’s women the length of their hems or instructs quivering housewives to throw out their wardrobe.

Indeed, this entertaining and funny memoir reveals a self-deprecating personality, frequently pillorying her own sartorial choices. Her shoes are ‘the kind you’d find advertised in the back of a Sunday supplement next to bed jackets and incontinence pants’, she writes, and she cheerfully claims to have ‘made a career as the dumpy one standing next to the rangy, languid-limbed Trinny’.

She insists that during a stint as a model, ‘the only job I managed to land was the “before” foot model for Dr Scholl corn pads and it soon became clear I was no Christie Brinkley’.

Nevertheless, she has certainly led a supermodel sort of life. She flies to Lahore with Imran Khan, visits sex clubs in Berlin with the lead singer of the Scissor Sisters, and parties with an underwhelming Andy Warhol in New York. Born into a wealthy family, she peoples these pages with more toffs than you can shake a sceptre at. It’s essentially a Baedeker, Debrett’s and a Who’s Who rolled into one.

She was also famous for stepping out with the Queen’s nephew Viscount Linley, son of Princess Margaret (above, with Constantine). At one point, Constantine finds herself invited for a stay at Balmoral at the same time as then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. During a day of salmon-fishing on the Dee, tea is brought out. When Constantine holds out her cup to be filled, the Queen and Mrs Thatcher engage in a battle of wills over who is to ‘be mother’, tussling for possession of a large brown teapot.

Naturally, Her Majesty eventually wins.