Countdown's Susie Dent brings her delight in the English language to Southampton

Dates this time round include Saturday, November 8 at Southampton’s Mayflower Studios.

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 Friday-night naughtier 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!”

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.

“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?”