Susie Dent marks 30 years on Countdown this year – but don’t call her a TV personality.
“That’s not who I am at all. I am a lexicographer and an ethnologist, who happens to be on a TV programme that I love,” says the 57-year-old.
And ultimately, staying true to who she is has been key for Dent’s longevity on screen – certainly personally, if not professionally too. “I just assumed I’d have to be really extroverted and out there, but Countdown has let me be me, which is brilliant,” she says.
Dent was working for Oxford English Dictionary when she was approached for the job on the dictionary corner of Countdown (“a wonderful and quite unique institution”) in 1992, but agrees being in front of the camera wasn’t a natural fit for her personality at first.
“Oh gosh no – 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.”
In many ways, Surrey-born Dent was known for being quiet and studious at school (she attended a 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 Dent 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.”
So while from a young age, she was put in a box – “I’ve made it my box,” she says now. “It’s definitely my identity, and actually it’s served me really well.
“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.”
Countdown, and its comedy spin off 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, is a natural fit for her competitive nature, though. “There’s a lot to be done” in those 30-second challenges, and “adrenaline kids in every time,” Dent adds.
“I’ve got a dictionary corner guest next to me, who I’m trying to impress as well. I’m trying to pre-empt what the contestants might come up with.”
She also hosts a popular podcast with Gyles Brandreth, Something Rhymes With Purple, which they’re taking to the live stage too. And for someone so private, she has a lot of Twitter followers – 1.1 million people who eat up her ‘word of the day’ posts.
Dent’s latest release, An Emotional Dictionary, is a reference book of words to help describe our emotions – exploring the history of those you’ll already know, to some you won’t, like lonesome-fret (the sadness of being on your own for too long), which she thinks would have been a handy word to have during the pandemic. “If those years have taught us anything, it’s that we don’t always have the words for our emotions,” she reflects.
Solitude, of course, is not the same as loneliness, being mostly something you seek. “Genuinely, I do love solitude, it recharges me,” says Dent. “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.”
Dent, 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 worried she’d fret over negative comments.
But “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’s 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.”
A breathing technique Dent finds helpful is to breathe in for 10 seconds, hold for 10 and then breathe out for 10. “One of our sound team taught me – it’s absolutely standard, I’d just never tried it before, and it does make a massive difference.”
So how else does she slow things down?
“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 it’s thanks to Gyles Brandreth that I’ve really got into poetry,” she adds. “He kept saying to me to read a poem before bed – and it’s amazing because it’s often quite short, you don’t forget what you’ve read two pages earlier. 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.”
An Emotional Dictionary by Susie Dent is published by John Murray on October 13, priced £16.99. Something Rhymes With Purple on Stage runs until February 19.
