Lexicographer Susie Dent has always dealt in facts, but an unplanned move into fiction has opened a new chapter for Countdown’s language expert, writes Emma Higginbotham
At the dawn of the nineties, Susie Dent was quietly getting on with her work in the dictionary department at Oxford University Press, when her boss’s boss sought her out. He told her that daytime quiz show Countdown was looking for more on-screen lexicographers, and she should definitely give it a go. Stardom awaited! What was her response?
“I said no,” recalls Susie. “Quite a few times, actually.
“I've always liked a life below the radar, so the last thing I wanted to do was pop my head above it. It wasn't part of the job description, and TV really didn’t hold the ‘magic of showbiz’ for me. But he made it clear that it would be a good thing for me to do professionally, and I'm very glad that he did persuade me.”
For those unfamiliar with the cult words and numbers game, Countdown – the first show to be broadcast by Channel 4 when it launched in 1982 – sees bright, polite contestants trying to make the longest possible word from nine random vowels and consonants. It’s then checked by the lexicographer, and a weekly-changing celebrity, in Dictionary Corner.
Susie’s first episode, sitting demurely next to actress Rula Lenska in June 1992, was a shock to the system. “Unfortunately the evidence is still on YouTube of me looking completely bewildered,” she says. But she soon found her groove. Part of a revolving team of lexicographers for more than a decade, she became the sole resident of Dictionary Corner in 2003 and, tens of thousands of episodes later, is officially the longest-running co-presenter in British TV history.
“Yes, 32 years! I used to say it was just me and the clock,” says Susie of the show’s other longterm fixture, “and then the clock was replaced, which made me slightly nervous.
“I have been there for a long time, and it will sound such a cliché when I say this, but I still absolutely love it. I still feel the adrenaline the moment the clock starts ticking – and it’s very loud in the studio. Every single show is a different challenge, so you just can’t get bored at all.”
Sniff out that YouTube clip and Susie – far less bewildered than she suggests – looks uncannily similar to how she does now, from the neat haircut to the shy smile. There’s a certain schoolgirlishness about her, but appearances can be deceptive. To her 1.1 million followers on X (formerly Twitter), she’s known for her ‘word of the day’ posts, which are often a playful dig at the world’s news. When Donald Trump was convicted of felony crimes on May 30, for example, her word of the day was ‘mumpsimus’ – a 16th century description of ‘someone who insists that they are right (or wronged) when all evidence points to the contrary’.
She’s also written several books about the weird and wonderfulness of language, and isn’t afraid to delve into the bawdy bits, whether it’s tracing the origins of swear words or explaining why there are so many English expressions for being drunk.
Today, though, Susie is chatting to Weekend on a Zoom call from her Oxford home about her first foray into fiction. Called Guilty By Definition, it revolves around a team of lexicographers who are trying to work out some fiendish word-based clues. If that doesn’t sound like thriller material, have faith – it’s a terrific page-turner and, given Susie’s mastery of language, is beautifully written too.
The novel begins when an anonymous letter is delivered to the fictional Clarendon English Dictionary in Oxford. It hints at lies and dark secrets, and also contains a date which lexicographer Martha recognises as the summer her sister Charlie went missing. Sinister postcards then trickle in, and Martha (who, she writes, loves words “as individuals – their roots, their rhythms, their skeletons, shapes and stories”) becomes fixated on discovering what happened to Charlie, and why.
Hmm. Something about this Oxford-based lexicographer rings a bell. Susie laughs. “Martha is fairly autobiographical, I have to say. I've had to really fight to make her less autobiographical, but she lives in her head, she loves words, she likes cemeteries, she likes German...
“I'm really worried about what people will think about the book,” she adds. “I wish I wasn't so sensitive to other people's opinions, but I have been all my life. Some will think it's too focused on the words, but words are my comfort zone. It’s a world that I know, and Oxford is a city that I live in, and love.”
Having a lexicographer as the central character works well for a mystery novel, as they have similar jobs to police detectives – albeit with less potential gore. “You're digging for clues, following the threads and looking for evidence, and I thought it would be lovely to bring the two together,” says Susie. “But I wouldn’t have had the courage to do it had I not been approached by Zaffre, the publishers.
“It was very similar, actually, to my introduction to Countdown. My immediate instinct was to say no, I've got enough drama in my dictionary, thanks. I don't need to find it anywhere else. But I remembered having written a short story when I was younger that went into the school magazine, and how proud my dad was. Throughout my life, he said ‘you should try and write stories’, so I just thought, OK, maybe I should go for it.”
The book is dedicated to her dad Colin who, very sadly, never saw his wish come to fruition. “He died last year, and I'm really sorry that he won't get to read it. He always asked about it, and it was a really nice thing, even when he was quite ill, to be able to talk to him about it.
“Because last year was quite difficult, obviously, the book became my oasis,” she continues. “I've always had that. I've always disappeared into dictionaries. Those were my safe places, and magical places for me.”
Born in 1964, Susie grew up with her older sister in the leafy Surrey village of Chobham. Reading was her passion, and not just books. “Anything really. Shampoo bottles, condiment bottles, signposts, ingredients... I'm still the same. Somehow I'm just drawn to the printed word.
“German and French were my first loves, and when I was seven or eight, I lost myself in their vocabulary lists. That sounds so dry,” she says, and laughs. “But they all told a story, and they'd all be thematic – one day you'd be at the seaside, then you'd be at the shops. There was drama there, and I would imagine these little scenarios. Even in my melancholy teenage years, believe it or not, I would escape into vocabulary books.
“There's another bit in my book which, again, is quite autobiographical,” she adds. “Martha is standing in a doorway at the covered market in Oxford, looking at other people and imagining their lives. I did that, but through words as well, I would create these little narratives in my head. It was a private joy.”
A self-confessed “geek” at school who relished doing homework, Susie had ambitions to become a translator. She studied Modern Languages at Oxford University, then headed to Princeton in the States where she completed an MA, but decided against a PhD. “Strangely, because I do live in my head a lot, I found academia too isolating,” she says. “So I taught German to the freshmen students at Princeton, and loved it. That was a pivotal moment for me: the decision as to whether to stay there or come back. Who knows how how my life would have panned out if I had stayed?”
But back she came. After applying to several publishing houses, she took a job at Oxford University Press, initially working on their bilingual dictionaries, and then Countdown came calling.
For someone so hesitant to fly above the radar, Susie’s come a long way in terms of high-profile work. Currently on tour with her show The Secret Lives of Words, she spent five years doing the hugely popular Something Rhymes with Purple podcast with Gyles Brandreth, and then there’s 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, the post-watershed – and altogether naughtier – version of the daytime quiz.
“One question I get asked a lot is which I would do if I could only do one, and I can’t possibly answer,” says Susie. “But I have Countdown to thank for everything, really, because had they not pushed me above the radar, I wouldn't be doing the writing. It's given me the most amazing platform.” No plans to stop, then? “No, not at all!” she says firmly. “No, I will be there as long as they'll have me.
“The thing that's most important to me is that I stay connected with words and language. Celebrity status is not really of interest to me, as long as I stay rooted in what I do. And I want to show that to my kids as well, that it's really important to have some kind of passion – an area of knowledge, or pastime or pursuit – that you feel belongs to you.”
Susie turns 60 later this year, and looks so ridiculously young that there’s a lengthy discussion on the Talk section of her Wikipedia page about whether her birth date is correct. What’s her secret? “Oh god, I don't know. I…. nothing,” she says, flustered. “I don't have any secrets at all. I used to be really careful about eating sugary stuff, but I'm afraid that's fallen by the wayside completely. I love cake. I've got a really fast metabolism, and I love walking?” she suggests. “That really helped me with the book as well, actually. I have a good friend who's also a writer, and we would set off together, and if there was a particularly gnarly bit of the plot that I needed to work through, we would talk about it. Walking and talking helps me keep my sanity.”
She isn’t willing to discuss her private life, beyond saying she that has two daughters, 24-year-old Lucy, and Thea, 16: “They absolutely hate me talking about them, so I avoid it always.” Nor will she be drawn on affairs of the heart since parting ways with her husband of two decades, teacher Paul Atkins, in 2021. “I also don't go there,” she says apologetically. “I realised that once you open that gate, that's it.”
Writing fiction, it seems, is her newest love, as another novel is already on the cards. “I’ve got a few ideas for it, and hopefully we'll have many of the same characters. Definitely Martha, and Alex.” Ah yes, Alex, the self-assured, divorced older woman who’s an established writer as well as a lexicographer. Ring any other bells, Susie?
“There's a lot of Alex I aspire to be like,” she admits. “She's perfectly happy. Still worries about her kids, as we all do, and there have been real bumps in her path, but she’s very sorted.
“One of the images that I always remember is when she and Martha are at a book launch, looking in a big mirror. Martha is feeling slightly uncertain, slightly wistful, still in her head, still not sure whether she's wearing the right thing, and Alex is looking confidently into the mirror and telling Martha to let her hair down. She says to Martha: ‘Have sex, eat pie, go for a run. Just live a little!’”
Susie, it’s fair to say, seems very sorted indeed. What would her younger self think of the grown-up version? “She'd probably be quite cross that I still worry as much as I do about what other people think,” she muses. “But I hope she would be proud that I stuck with words, and I stuck with the reputation of being a bit of a geek and a nerd, and made something out of it. Hopefully I’ve shown that it can be really wonderful to be a geek.”
Guilty by Definition (Zaffre) is out now
FOOD BITES
What was for breakfast? Oats, which I’d forgotten to soak overnight, so I added apple juice, loads of walnuts, because I've heard they're good for your brain, Brazil nuts, pumpkin seeds and yoghurt. I can't promise I’m always that healthy.
Do you have a signature dish? My kids would probably say no! I'm all right at veggie chillies. Because I'm vegetarian, but the rest of my family aren't, it’s about finding things that suit everybody.
Last famous person you dined with? My friend Rob Rinder, who I see quite a lot. It wasn’t a fancy restaurant – just home-cooked food.
A good food-themed word? Some of our words for friendship are based on food, which I love. At the heart of ‘companion’ is the Latin for ‘bread’, because a companion is someone you eat bread with. And ‘mate’ actually comes from ‘meat’ – again, somebody you sat down and ate with.
An edited version of this interview appeared in Waitrose Weekend in August 2024 (c) Waitrose