Countdown’s Susie Dent reveals the one thing that would make her leave – and secret behind her ‘word of the day’
COUNTDOWN star Susie Dent has revealed the one thing that would make her leave the iconic Channel 4 show.
The programme’s wordsmith has also confessed the secret behind her ‘word of the day’.
Susie, 56, has sat in the show‘s Dictionary Corner for nearly 30 years following her first appearance back in 1992.
And she admits she won’t be giving up her chair anytime soon – unless she’s given the boot.
“I’m sure I won’t be there forevermore, as much as I’d love to be,” she told .
“As long as they’ll have me, I’ll be there because I do absolutely love it. It’s such a brilliant gig to have and it’s just an ongoing source of learning for me, I just never stop.
“I do love it and hopefully there aren’t people longing for my replacement when they watch it.”
The lexicographer is part of the quiz show’s regular line-up alongside maths whiz Rachel Riley.
Anne Robinson, 76, was recently announced as the show’s sixth host, following Richard Whiteley, Des Lynam, Des O’Connor, Jeff Stelling and Nick Hewer in the famous hotseat.
Hewer, also 76, revealed he was quitting Countdown in December after fronting the teatime programme for a decade.
Susie has been sharing her love of the English language further afield as part of Amazon Alexa’s Word of the Day initiative which ends on Friday.
To discover new daily words, fans can simply ask Alexa ‘what’s the word of the day?’ to hear one of Susie’s uniquely handpicked words, complete with a simple definition and contextual example.
She explained: “On Twitter, I do A Word Of The Day which is usually inspired by either topical event, or the way that I’m feeling particularly at that moment in time.
“And it’s just had a lovely response and what I’m learning is how passionate other people really are about language and how much they aspire to kind of increase their vocabulary.
“But also, they delight in knowing that there is a word for something that they never knew existed.”
She went on: “It might be an emotion that I’m trying to describe, it might be a particular individual.
“I found that insults go down quite well or it might just be to do with a topical event that actually just fills a gap.”
Countdown airs weekdays, 2.15pm, Channel 4.