Credited to Steve Ullathorne
Susan Calman
1978-
Comedian and Broadcaster
Susan Calman is a Scottish comedian and a frequent panellist on BBC Radio 4 topical shows The News Quiz and I Guess That's Why They Call It The News. She has appeared in Channel 4 sketch shows and covers for Fred MacAulay on his BBC Radio Scotlandshow. She has also appeared in Rab C. Nesbitt.
Other television work includes presenting the CBBC programme Extreme School and providing the comic voiceover on the CBBC series Disaster Chefs. Calman is a regular performer at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and at The Stand Comedy Club.
Calman went to The High School of Glasgow and then went on to study law at Glasgow University, winning a Judge Brennan scholarship and a three-month stint in North Carolina working with criminals on death row. She gradually became dissatisfied with working as a specialist in freedom of information and data protection and developed her stand-up comedy during evenings, eventually giving up her job with Dundas & Wilson to develop a career in comedy.
She reached the semi-finals of the BBC New Comedy Awards in 2005 and was a finalist in the Funny Women competition in 2006. Along with the rest of the cast of Channel 4’s sketch show Blowout, she won a Scottish BAFTA in 2007, and in 2009 she was awarded the Best New Scottish Comedian at the Real Radio Variety Awards.
Calman came out as a lesbian at the age of 19 and has spoken of her difficulties growing up gay in Glasgow. After nine years together Calman and her partner (a fellow lawyer) had their civil partnership ceremony in 2012.
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