Susan Calman has not had it easy. Growing up gay in Glasgow was like being 'a vegan abattoir worker'. At 30 she gave up the law to become a comedian, and it's starting to pay off
The lucky thing is, says Susan Calman, that although she is "an eternal worrier, occasionally I do something stupid." And so, some time after her 30th birthday and one five-minute gig in a club in Glasgow, she decided to give up her successful, well-paid job as a corporate lawyer to become a comedian. "I think I earned £250 that year," she says. "It really was the stupidest thing I could have done, but also the best thing. I just thought, if I don't do it now, I'm never going to."
Now, at 37, the years of work have started to pay off. Calman has three Edinburgh festival shows behind her, and a new one this year; she has been a regular panellist on Radio 4's News Quiz and popped up on Have I Got News for You; she is acting in and writing sitcoms – including one with Sandi Toksvig commissioned by the BBC – and has just been nominated for a Chortle comedy award, one of only two individual women out of 54 nominations (but we'll come to that).
We sit, with pots of tea, by the window. It isn't just her size – she is 4ft 11in, and has the tiniest hands I've seen of anyone over the age of eight – that makes her seem childlike; she also has an openness and cheerful excitability, and not a trace of cynicism. It makes her extremely likable. But there's a brisk, businesslike side to her too, and a work ethic that is relentless and slightly scary. When her partner, a lawyer, goes to work, so does Calman, sitting at her desk until 6pm writing, often followed by gigs in the evening. She is also prone to insomnia, sleeping for just two or three hours a night, so she will get up and work. "Coming to it later in life, I've got an absolute drive. To say you have a job you love is a remarkable thing, so you shouldn't squander it sitting in your pants watching Jeremy Kyle."
As a child, Joyce Grenfell and Hattie Jacques were her first comedy influences. "Then The Young Ones, and then I found French and Saunders, and Victoria Wood, but it really started with Grenfell and Jacques – maybe it was because they were different-looking and I knew I was never going to be 5ft 8in and blonde that I identified with them." Becoming a lawyer, she says, was just something you did "if you've got exam results. I was rubbish at science so I couldn't be a doctor, and I thought law sounds all right, there's a job at the end."
It was probably also what was expected from a fairly traditional background – Calman was educated privately, and is the daughter of Sir Kenneth Calman, former chief medical officer of Scotland and chairman of the Commission on Scottish Devolution (her parents are banned from her shows because "they're a bit sweary"; she means her gigs, not her parents). She was a lawyer for seven years and enjoyed some of it, "but most importantly, it gave me another life. I've had a job, I've paid taxes, I've been miserable, I've been happy. I know what it feels like to be someone on a Friday night coming home from work and I know my job is to try to make [those people] slightly happier. I've got a different viewpoint than if I was young and starting in comedy."
Calman doesn't remember much about her first gig at the Stand club in Glasgow – not being on stage, not what she said, not how the audience reacted – "But I do remember at one point thinking, this is the best thing I've ever done in my life." She pauses. "I think I was sick afterwards." (She still gets very nervous before a show, but her trick is to roll bits of Blu-Tack between her fingers, usually secreted in her pocket, to calm her hands, which always shake.)
What did she like about being on stage? "I think most comedians have a little bit of their soul missing where they need to get on stage on a Friday night in front of strangers and say, 'Please clap, please laugh, I require this attention'," she says with a smile. Does she really mind what people think? "I mind completely, and I shouldn't. I never read reviews, I never Google myself, but I do care what people think about what I've done, or that they think I'm quite a nice person. It's sad, isn't it?"
When she has written something, "especially if it's personal – because a lot of the stuff I do is – and it works, it's an extraordinary feeling. There's no feeling like it. My better half is a remarkable woman, but I remember early on I had done some gigs and I didn't have any more, and I was grumpy, and she said something like 'am I not enough for you?' I had to say, 'well I do love you but … '"
Calman once said growing up gay in Glasgow "was as easy as being a vegan abattoir worker". When I remind her of this she says "it wasn't easy, not at all. Glasgow is a lovely city, but when I was growing up there was one lesbian bar, and there was a club for men, but there was no internet, there was no way of finding out [about other people]. It was in the middle of Section 28 [the legislation banning the promotion of homosexuality] and it wasn't a very good time."
I ask if she was bullied at school and she says, "I think bullied would be over-dramatic," but she was an unhappy teenager. "Looking back, [coming to terms with] my sexuality had more to do with my unhappiness than I care to admit. At the time, there was nobody to talk to about it or see that it was normal. I think some of my isolation came from that, and the feeling of not fitting in well very much comes from that time."
Her show at Edinburgh this year is called This Lady's Not for Turning Either. "It's not about Margaret Thatcher, but it is about growing up with Section 28 and the fact that her policies have made me sure I'm never turning politically." It's "stories about how horrific I am to live with", but "I also wanted to cover something that was very important to me, which is not being allowed to marry someone I have been with for such a long time". Calman came out when she was 19, "and I thought something might have changed by now".
She has been with her partner for nine years, and they are registering their civil partnership in the summer. Meanwhile, the Scottish government has had a consultation on whether same-sex marriage should be introduced. "It's about equality, it's about having the choice," says Calman. "And it's about the things that are said about why I'm not allowed to get married – I read in a paper that 'gay people were a shame on Scotland' and in 2012 that is a distressing thing to read. It feels like you live your life … " She pauses and her eyes well up. The swiftness of it is quite shocking, and she is quiet for a few seconds. "It will change. We just keep going."
Calman did a gig once, early in her career, where she asked a man what he did for a living and he said, "I kill fat dykes", and the rest of the crowd cheered. She walked off. "That's what you do with that," she says. Another man in the front row, on a different night, said, "I'm going to rape you."
"The gig essentially stopped and I had a conversation with the guy. I don't want to shout at him, I want to make him understand why it's unacceptable." Then she adds, "I don't want this to sounds like Susan whingeing. I've done hundreds of gigs with nothing like that happening." Does she think the abuse women comics get tends to have a sexist dimension? "It tends to be based on our looks, or something sexual, but women out on the street, that's what gets shouted at them. I'm not special because I'm a comedian."
It brings us to the inevitable subject of women in comedy. It is something Calman has spoken about – in 2009, she organised a protest at the Edinburgh festival, bringing together around 80 female comics for a photograph to "empirically" prove there were women doing standup – but at the same time she seems weary of the topic. She takes a deep breath, and suddenly she's all lawyerly, talking in measured tones. "It's a difficult issue that follows all of us around. Some people do not like female comics. I don't know what's in the mind of someone else, I don't know if someone is prejudiced, the only thing I can do is work as hard as I can until people can no longer ignore me, turn up for everything I'm booked for and do it to the best of my ability."
Last month, Mark Linsey, the BBC's controller of entertainment commissioning, acknowledged the BBC had failed to promote enough women comedians. "We don't have enough female comedians on television – that's something we are aware of and trying to do something about," he said. How does Calman feel about this? "I don't ever want to get anything in life because someone's made a special case for me. Law is a very misogynistic profession, probably worse than comedy, and I didn't sit at my desk and say, 'I'm not being promoted because I'm a woman'. I think the more of an issue we make of it, the more difficult it becomes."
Great strides are being made by women, she says, that aren't necessarily recognised by awards committees. "People like Sarah Millican, who is really successful. Watson & Oliver are on now [on BBC2], Anna & Katy are very funny, and Miranda, and there's more. Working with people like Sandi and Annie Griffin [who directed the Channel 4's Fresh Meat, in which Calman appeared], I'm in a new show called Dead Boss, which is written by Sharon Horgan and has Jennifer Saunders in it. I don't know if everyone expects some big bang where women are suddenly on television all the time. That's not going to happen, but a few of us will come through, start changing perceptions and it will become the norm, and that's all I want."
There is the idea that women don't fare well on "testosterone-fuelled" (Victoria Wood's words) panel shows, but isn't it sexist to assume all women are intimidated by them? "I don't have a problem being in a competitive environment," says Calman. "If people had sat in an office with some of the people I used to work with as a lawyer, that's competitive. It's more that a lot of people on those shows are gag merchants. If you don't tell one-liners, that's not the best showcase for you. It's very much about who you want to be as a comic."
The comedians who excite her are "people like Mark Thomas, Jeremy Hardy, Andy Zaltzman, who are doing really interesting political stuff. With an hour-long show, you can talk about things and ideas, and you don't need to do a punchline every few seconds. I want to make people laugh – nobody wants to see me give a lecture – but I'd like people to see a show and find out something about me, or feel something. I'm interested in the emotions you feel when you watch comedy."
What does Calman want? Sell-out, stadium-level stardom? "No, I like to see the whites of people's eyes," she says. "Do you remember Tutti Frutti? It's still the best comedy I've ever seen. If I can write something in my life that's as good as that, or close to it, I'll be happy. I didn't start doing this to be recognised in the street, I did this because I've wanted it for years." She gathers her things, and in this light suddenly looks so young that she reminds me of a child packing up at the end of school. "I figure if I keep doing as much as is humanly possible, something will maybe work."
Susan Calman's new show This Lady's Not For Turning Either can be seen at this year's Edinburgh fringe festival. Details: edfringe.com