Daria Simpson-Dernovaya is a Bath University Undergraduate on placement as a Private Detective. Other episodes available on the Podcast series 'Detective Diaries'

Daria Simpson-Dernovaya

Darias' Detective Diary

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Daria Simpson-Dernovaya

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Daria, Private Eye - Daria Simpson-Dernovaya

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Welcome to Detective Diaries, brought to you by Private Detective's Answers Investigation.

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If you are captivated by the art of deduction, the thrill of solving the unsolvable or the

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enigmatic world of private investigation, you've just found your new favorite podcast.

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Detective Diaries is where secrets unravel and the truth is always a clue away.

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Presented by Private Detectives Answer Investigation, each episode contains

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off-bit conversations about the real people involved in investigation.

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You join us once more for another episode of Detective Diaries. Today I am joined by

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a new member to our crew, Daria Simpson-Dernovaya. She's 20 years old currently studying at the University

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of Bath and Undergraduate Criminology degrees. She's joining us for a professional placement

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year. So lots of good things to look forward to. But Daria is doing more than that. It's been

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agreed and may I say she's very interested in producing what we're going to call Daria's

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Diaries. She's going to be coming to you hopefully every two, maybe three weeks with her

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thoughts, opinions and some of the cases she's been getting involved in. It'll be great for any

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of the students listening, anyone who's interested in our work experience, you'll get a real insight

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into what we do and how we do it. So without further ado, Daria take it away.

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Hello everyone. I'm Daria Simpson-Dernovaya and as Harry rightly said, I'm at University of

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Bath and I'm doing the criminology degree and I'm very excited to join the team. I'm 20 years old.

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I was born in Kazakhstan, specifically in the capital city Astana. And I moved here about 10

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years ago. So that's quite a unique experience straight away. I mean, I see this born in

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Kazakhstan. How many languages do you speak? Come on, put me to shame. I speak only two languages,

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but that's still one more than you. I speak Russian and English. I'm fluent in both. I like to practice

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both and do you find that you're using the Russian often? With my family absolutely. I go back every

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year, every summer, most of my grandparents and relatives speak only Russian, but on top of that

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music, films, everything, just it's a mixture of both. It's a 50/50 brain. I've got a 50/50 brain.

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Well that sounds fascinating. Come on, give me a phrase and something perhaps you say to your family

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will they say to you when you're back home? Well one of the really good phrases that comes to mind

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that relates especially to the job that I'm doing with you guys now is Glaza Bayazza Rokidilud.

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You hear of that one? No, go ahead. Basically the direct translation is your eyes are scared,

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but your hands are still doing. It means that when you're scared of something, you just do it. That's

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nice because I was worried about starting this job. Everything is new, the people are new. I haven't

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done any of these techniques before, so I'm scared, but I'm still doing it. There's another one which is

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quite funny and that relates to me being used to getting used to a 9 to 5 job, which is Dela Dela Gulae-Smela,

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which literally just means get it done and then you can relax. I like that last one.

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So come on, why would you want to do this job? Tell us a bit more about your background,

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your education, but what led you to want to be a private investigator? As I said, I am currently at

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University of Bath Im doing an undergraduate criminology degree, and I strongly recommend for

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anybody that's listening to study criminology. It's a very well-rounded degree. You get your foot

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in the door to sociology, psychology, law, politics. We do studies of conflict and criminology,

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obviously. My favorite modules so far have been ones that are in global crimes of the powerful,

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female criminality and youth justice, but having said all of that for my two years at uni so far,

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I've noticed myself getting really bored of theory and hypotheticals. So that's honestly what motivated

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me to come here and actually start applying the knowledge of practicing what I preach.

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Sure, getting the actual practical experience of how you're going and doing the real thing.

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Doing the real thing and applying all of these theories instead of sitting in the classroom

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and wondering whether or not these theories are accurate and how they can help in the real world.

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So is always something that you wanted to do, do you think? When were you younger?

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Well, I am the first in my family to go into this type of career. I don't have any background in law

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enforcement. We've got teachers in our family, we've got politicians in our family, coal miners,

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but no law enforcement, no private detectives. So I wanted to do something first that I wanted to stand

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out from my family and sort of add to our family portfolio of jobs. I think so, honestly, I think

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it was something that I wanted to do since I was quite a bit younger, but I didn't have a name for it.

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I sort of knew that I wanted to do research and I wanted to do something with the detective

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vibe. I just didn't know exactly what I wanted to do.

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I guess then the real question is what have you been doing? What is this real practical stuff?

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And clearly you've been enjoying it, right? I can tell by the smile on your face.

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I have. I really have harry, to be honest. Where do I begin?

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I think I'll begin with the most exciting thing that I did, which was surveillance.

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In and of itself, the word surveillance has put like a shocked expression on everybody's faces.

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When I told people, yeah, I'm just doing surveillance tomorrow. It was always what?

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What do you mean by that? But we did surveillance and

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reading without going into too many details. I felt very natural doing it. It was very exciting. I

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felt myself following instincts, especially when me and Juliet were splitting up and sort of

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covering all bases. I also think that when you start doing surveillance, you start to really

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think about how you behave normally, even if it's just, how do I sit down when I've got nothing

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to hide? How do I hold my phone when I'm not stalking somebody and trying to replicate that?

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So that was quite interesting. Another thing that I have done this week is been to a networking

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event with Nigel. We're not to brag, but I met and chatted to the mayor of Guildford.

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I met the mayor. I met the mayor and she showed me a picture of her bicycle and she's got a fantastic

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parking spot with just that. She was brilliant. I really enjoyed her. I want to come back to the

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surveillance for a second, because I like what you said about the psychological elements.

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Is one of those things is that you have to sometimes get over your own paranoia, or

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just sit on my leg cross like this, and you're like, "Oh, I've got a newspaper. How did you find

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getting into that side of it?" Not that difficult. I think it's because I've realised in my 20 years of

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life that nobody cares. It's to the point where I can go out in a bin bag and I'm pretty sure nobody

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will notice me. So sitting down and just being on my phone, well, pretending to be on my phone,

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felt quite natural. I think it's quite a bit different from other people's experience, because instead

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of assuming the worst, I sort of assume that nobody cares. That's usually the case. Usually, if I

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were to go back and ask, "Did you notice me sitting out there for eight hours?" They would say,

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"No," which is shocking and very interested to think about from a psychological perspective.

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But nevertheless, I found it very natural to do surveillance, to be honest. It was, as I said,

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just following instincts. I felt like I knew that while I was doing from the get-go.

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You operated out of uni, and you had to be great.

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Please do so.

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So you've done a bit of surveillance. You had this network meeting and ovbsiously meeting the mayor . That

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was wonderful. Tell us a bit more. Where has you been up to this week?

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I've done some research, which was incredibly exciting. I did some GPS tracking and a bit of

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Google Maps action looking at what around the area could possibly have taken this woman three hours to do.

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Oh, last night we went to serve legal papers, didn't we? You said it was boring. I disagree.

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I found it really exciting improvising how to get into the building when I literally told you to

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step aside, rang a random doorbell, and said, "I'm here to meet a friend. Could you buzz me in please?"

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I thought it was quite interesting, actually.

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You even complimented his t-shirt. I even complimented his t-shirt, indeed.

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So you got us in. You got us in. I did get us in, and I thought it was so fun to try and

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improvise and weasel your way to somewhere where you're clearly just not supposed to be.

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What's to say? I mean, sometimes when you serve in papers you've got locations which are a bit

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secure, you know, telecom actors and so forth. So yeah, you have to come up with a bit of an act,

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and I think he did exceptionally well. Well, thank you. Please make use of this.

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It was boring because he wasn't there. I know. And we heard him as well.

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We did. We did. We did. The bastard didn't come to the door.

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So you've done everything really, then.

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So you've done a bit of survalliance, You've done some

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networking. What was your favourite bit of all of that?

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My favourite part was bragging to people about what I've done.

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And witnessing my friends, my family, my boyfriend bragging to others about what I do as well.

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It's become a token of bragging rights, basically.

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There's also one thing that I wanted to mention which is I received the company cards,

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and I felt very official and very, very proper. Thank you for that, by the way, I feel very included

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in the team even though I've been here for a week. We're going to look after to everyone. So now,

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I'm really happy to hear that as well, actually. But so, that's this week. There's plenty more coming up.

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I'm pretty sure you're on to a bit of moon lighting. I'm on this case. And next week,

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there will be hopefully a large development in said case when I go undercover. Again,

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crazy thing to say out loud. Daria is going undercover. That is insane. Never thought I'd hear that.

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I don't know how much detail I'm supposed to say or not, but I will be meeting

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a certain person and pretending to be a different person in order to get information.

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I think you put that quite eloquently. Yeah. Yeah.

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Without revealing too much. Protecting the privacy of our clients. So within two weeks, you're going to

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be involved in a majority of the interesting things that we get up to. So, I'd be obviously keen

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to put on a bit of a persona, make this character work for next week. I am. I'm not telling you guys

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the name and I'm not telling you guys any details. Just know that she's cool. Persona is cool.

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I love that. So, what else do you think or want to do? What do you see yourself do?

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The impact of your time with us here? I want to work a case from start to finish. From the initial

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meeting with the clients, finding out information to finding out answers and coming up with a resolution.

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Because I think so far, I've just sort of been dropped in the middle of a case where I don't really

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know exactly what's happening. I'm sort of looking at a document which has been done by you or

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Nigel or anybody else. I'm really looking forward to actually having a case that is mine and

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working it from start to finish. I think it would be incredibly satisfying and I think I'll be good at

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it. I want to do some more online research. So, I've sort of done the land registry, reverse

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Google image searching, car registrations, but I want to learn more techniques like mobile forensics

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which is your field that I've never tried before. I think that would be amazing. And I want to do

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some more exciting surveillance like for example what Adina did with the going undercover in person

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in London. I would like to do that maybe in a couple of months time because ultimately I just want

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to get to grips with everything and feel like I know what I'm doing but that would be quite exciting

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to do actually if you let me. So tell me about your feelings then when you were applying through

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this whole process because we had 22 applicants I believe at the time and those got shortlisted

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and whittles out onto you and here you are. Tell me about that experience and going through that.

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I was nervous but I'm so glad that I did it. Again, going back to that same Russian phrase,

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what was it? Literally wrote that down. Was that Bayezero Kideolo? I was nervous but I did it anyway.

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It was nerve-racking but I really enjoyed it. I felt that before meeting you guys I was more nervous

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and then as soon as I walked in I realized that everybody's super nice, everybody's very welcoming

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and I felt part of the team from the minute that I walked in despite the fact I didn't even know

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that I got it. And I remember when I came in for my interview and Nigel stopped me as I was walking

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out of the room and asked me what I'm doing that same week and I sort of said oh nothing and he's like

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how would you like to come to London? And I was like yeah absolutely discussed that shortly. I

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go out the door again and I get stopped again saying what are you doing for the entire week? Have I

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just come and do the week of work experience with us? We'll do everything, we'll cover the cost of

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travel, we'll give you this, we'll give you that, how about that? And I knew from that point that

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even if I didn't get it that I would get some really valuable experience. Having said that,

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I'm glad that I got it. I think that was a wonderful week and again learning the ropes isn't it to

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put you in the position where you're on now so yeah wonderful. So then Darias diaries come on

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because you came up with this and I think you likely idea. It's actually Darias Detective Diaries

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Its triple D, yeah triple D. I am thinking that everything that I've said in the last portion of this

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episode about things that I want to do. I want to keep coming back and explaining my experience

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sort of saying if it was overwhelming, underwhelming, whether it was different from what I expected or

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exactly what I expected. So I think what you said at the beginning every two or three weeks,

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as long as you give me something to talk about, assign me cases, do you put me to good use? And I

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will talk about it and I think it would be very exciting to hear about as well. I think people

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are going to quite enjoy hearing your particular insight because of course yet you are unique,

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it's going to be different from someone else, but coming from that sort of grassroots into learning

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the ropes is actually doing it. That's going to be quite a nice and wonderful experience. I hope so.

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I hope perhaps we're going to get this undercover story out there first maybe once that's

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dust has settled and we can talk about it. Yeah, I think it's quite dangerous to say that because

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I want to focus on the task at hand instead of what am I going to say in the next one second.

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That's a dangerous thing to say, but yes, exactly. Zdelal delo gylai smelo what I said at

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the beginning. We're looking forward to hearing more from you. It's going to be a wonderful year,

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hopefully longer. We'll see, obviously. Is there anything else you want to leave the audience with

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before you go? Just tune in. That's it. You heard her. tune in.

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(Music)

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These are the words of Eugene Francois Bidock in his resignation letter from his position of Chief

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of the French National Serité in the 1820s before he became the world's first private detective.

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Listen to the story of his career from criminal to the founder of the Serité to private investigator

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