Susie Dent on Tribes

Have you ever wondered why football managers all speak the same way, what a cabbie calls the Houses of Parliament, or how ticket inspectors discreetly request back-up?

We are surrounded by hundreds of tribes, each speaking their own distinct slanguage of colourful words, jokes and phrases, honed through years of conversations on the battlefield, in A&E, backstage and at ten-thousand feet in the air.

As the resident word-expert on Countdown’s Dictionary Corner, Susie Dent knows her way around the English language. In this Sunday Sermon, she’ll show you how to decode modern Britain’s secret languages and discover what really makes us tick. You’ll discover terms like:

jack brew (Army) making yourself a cuppa without making one for anyone else

bert (trainspotter) someone who simply sees trains as a way of getting from A to B

VIP (doctor in A&E) Very Intoxicated Person

Kate Moss (golfer) a shot that’s a bit thin

little brown job (twitcher) any bird that can’t be definitely identified

disco rice (bin men) maggots

crotch watch (flight attendant) the walk through the cabin carrying out a seatbelt check

Join us for a witty guide through the linguistic minefields that surround us all.

Susie Dent is the resident word expert in Dictionary Corner on C4’s Countdown and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, has been on every programme about words: 15 x 15, Word of Mouth, More or Less; and is a regular panellist on R4’s Wordaholics. Susie also writes a weekly column for the Radio Times and reviews for the Spectator.