In Profile: Susan Calman

Susan Calman quit her job as a lawyer for a career in comedy only five years ago, the same year as she started stand-up. “I was depressed with my job” she tells me, “and I thought, if I don’t try being a comedian now, I’ll never do it.”

She’s one of a number of successful comics who’ve given up reliable, make-your-mother-proud careers (doctors, lawyers, teachers) for the capricious world of stand up comedy. But Calman doesn’t put this down to anything inherent in these career paths. She puts it down more to the wider options that people have nowadays. “When we were at university, you couldn’t say ‘I’m going to be a comedian' whereas now I think you probably can say that. In the early 90s, The Stand wasn’t even open.”

Over the past fifteen years, The Stand – which Calman describes as a “beautiful, wonderful, nurturing environment” – has been at the centre of the growing Scottish comedy scene, but the circuit’s still not big enough for mainstream success, and comedy production in Scotland is not enough to sustain a career. Calman is one of relatively few successful Scottish comics who have – so far – resisted the call of the South.

“I want to try and stay in Scotland, but I don’t know whether that’s going to be possible, because most of my work is in London – or maybe Manchester.”  The money in comedy remains mostly down South, and there’s still a culture that anyone working in comedy has to prove themselves there in order to get things made – be they a writer or performer or, like Calman and many others, both: “They don’t necessarily know who you are if you stay up in Scotland.”

Calman’s doing well so far though. TV appearances include Rab C Nesbitt, Comedy Rocks and Big Brother’s Big Mouth, but she’s mostly known for her radio work: she can often be heard on Radio 4’s The News Quiz and is a regular stand-in for Fred McAulay on his Radio Scotland show.

You can see Calman at The Stand, Glasgow, this September. She’s also waiting to hear about a number of other projects (“My motto is, if you have as many projects as possible on the go, then at least one of them will come off eventually.”) so look out for her on TV and radio everywhere.

In the meantime, support live comedy; and  help keep it in the country.