Susie Dent heads to Northampton to share the wonder of words

But she admits she has been stumped, albeit on the rare occasion.

Countdown’s queen of Dictionary Corner for more than 30 years, Susie – who will come to Northampton this month as part of her new tour, Word Perfect – has many fond memories of her time on the show and recalls one particularly amusing moment.

“I was doing some work on the tour the other day, and I was reminiscing about Richard Whiteley, when one of my most embarrassing moments came back to me,” Susie says.

“The letters had been selected, the clock had ticked down, and a contestant offered their five-letter word. I didn’t quite catch what they said, so I asked them to spell it, which they duly did: D. O. I. N. G. In my head this translated to ‘doi-ng’ to rhyme with ‘boing’, so I proceeded to look it up. Until Richard saved my bacon by chipping in with ‘It’s do-ing, Susie’.”

Susie turned down the offer to join the team of Oxford University Press lexicographers who took turns in Dictionary Corner three times, but a persistent boss wouldn’t let it lie.

“It wasn’t on my bucket list to be on TV – I’m happiest when I’m below the radar! But now I’m so grateful my audition was successful,” she says. “As for my first appearance, I said as little as possible! There is a clip online of that first show, when I sat next to Rula Lenska and looked utterly frozen.

“I will be forever amazed, and grateful, that they kept me on. After about ten years, Richard and Carol wanted a full-time lexicographer within the team, and happily I ended up alongside them as a permanent fixture.”

But for someone who had no inclination to appear on TV, Susie has a very clear place in her heart for the Channel 4 tea-time words and numbers quiz and its naughtier Friday-night sibling 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown.

“8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown has reminded many of those people who grew up with the show of the joy of the game, and of course it’s brought in the laughs to go with it” she said.

“The real beauty of Countdown is its format. Anybody who watches it can understand the rules of the game within minutes and then join in to play along – no matter what their age or ability. Even with the comedy version, people do still love to play the game.

“Many of our contestants watched the show with their parents and grandparents, and so it has that real connection with family, too.

“After 33 years I still feel the adrenaline as the clock starts to tick down. It really is one of the biggest joys of my life. My feet will stay under the table in Dictionary Corner for as long as viewers will have me!”

Susie’s role on Countdown has made her a household name, and she has an incredible knack for being able to sum up a moment or a mood with an ideal word.

In her new tour Word Perfect, she is looking forward to taking audiences on a “romp through some of the joys of the English language”, looking at specific words and their stories, as well as many of the quirks which make our mother tongue so brilliantly unpredictable as well as magical.

Speaking about her new tour, Susie said: “The English language will never stop surprising and delighting me. It is as wayward as it is majestic, while the dictionary is as full of magic, drama and adventure as you will find anywhere.

“I can’t wait to walk down some more of its secret alleyways with the Word Perfect audiences, and to hear their own questions about our curious mother tongue! We’re going to have a lot of fun.

“I’ll be looking at some of the astonishing secret lives many of our words and phrases have held, and the imperfections of language and how people perceive them.

“I’ll also introduce some long-lost gems from the past, and tackle some of the big questions about language. Which came first, orange the fruit or the colour? How should we really pronounce scone? And do our names really turn out to be good guides to our career?

“I’m always on a mission to revive lost words, and I’m looking forward to sharing some of my favourites. In the Victorian era, for example, sausages were known as ‘bags of mystery’ because no one ever knew what was in them. Eggs were ‘cacklefarts’, and an umbrella was a ‘bumbershoot’. I’ll also be delving into collective nouns. Who decided it should be a murder of crowds, or a parliament of owls, and where have some of these come from?”

Now a bestselling author as well as Britain’s best-loved wordsmith, Susie recalls always loving words as a child, but her first loves were foreign languages; she studied German and French and initially worked on bilingual dictionaries for the Oxford University Press.

“Studying the etymology of English only really became a passion in my 20s, but I’ve not looked back since” she recalls.

“As a child, I used to read vocab books in the car on long journeys. I was lost in them, lapping up the shape and sound and rhythms of words.

“I loved storybooks too, don’t get me wrong, but that was mainly because I could look up the words within them! I would lie on my stomach in a sunny spot at home and would never be happier than when I was reading a book with a dictionary next to me.”

Susie Dent comes to the Royal & Derngate on Sunday November 30. The show starts at 2pm. Visit royalandderngate.co.uk or call 01604 624811 to book.