STRICTLY SUSAN’S GUN SCARE
JUST WONDERFUL Before turning to a career in comedy, Scots star Susan Calman had experiences which make tricky audiences pale in comparison
AS SHE spoke politely to a woman in a Virginia Holiday Inn, Susan Calman suddenly found herself at the end of a gun.
“She told me she had a gun under the table and I should stop asking questions,” the Scots star remembers.
Yes, this is comedian and presenter Susan Calman, who has become one of the most talked about contestants on Strictly Come Dancing this year.
And this disturbing memory is not last night’s Strictly-induced anxiety nightmare but a real event from her past.
Susan wowed Strictly fans with her Wonder Woman routine last week and, like all good superheroes, she has lived something of a double life.
The 42-year-old Glaswegian studied law when she left school and worked as a lawyer for seven years as her “first” career.
And when she spent a summer in the US studying constitutional law, she found it was a far more dangerous occupation than daytime telly.
The client pointing a gun was a prison guard accused of sleeping with an inmate. Susan recalled: “We were asking questions she felt uncomfortable with and she said she had a gun under the table and I should stop. We left. Of course you will leave, very quickly.”
And that wasn’t the only time Susan was threatened with a firearm. “We also tried to visit a trailer park and someone shot a gun to tell us they didn’t want to speak,” she recalls.
“I had never experienced guns before but there, everyone had guns. It is not something we experience here.”
Susan’s spell in the US was in 1996. More than 20 years on, the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas is only the latest evidence that nothing has changed.
“I’m very grateful in this country we have the legislation that means that couldn’t happen here,” said Susan.
Gun threats aren’t where the gritty revelations end.
Susan also visited serial killers on death row in North Carolina, including one man who had killed three women – making the idea of facing Craig Revel
Horwood’s acidic insults each week seem less daunting. Susan admits she did not instantly dislike that particular serial killer. She said: “He was very pleasant, most people are. Psychopaths aren’t how horror films portray people. I was young, you don’t have fear. Now I would probably be terrified.” For many viewers, Susan is Strictly’s least-known contestant. But there is a lot to learn about her. Her zany turns in the ballroom with partner Kevin Clifton have so far been full of character. And her Wonder Woman samba last week wowed, especially when she took the lead. This was not, she insisted, because as a gay woman she wants a same-sex partner – a row that dogs the contest. She just felt it was what Wonder Woman would do. “The dance was me saving Kevin from peril,” she laughed.
This week, Susan is doing the quickstep to Morecombe and Wise’s Bring Me Sunshine – the song she used for the first dance at her 2012 wedding to lawyer Lee Cormack. As well as Lee being there to cheer, her parents are coming – to see her perform live for the first time, at anything. It will add to her nerves.
Susan has been a panellist on Radio 4 shows The News Quiz and I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, written and acted in radio sitcom Sisters, performed at the Edinburgh Fringe and presented for CBBC and BBC1 quiz The Boss. You assume, then, the showtime side of Strictly is right up her street. After all, if you’ve been held up with guns and stared serial killers in the eye, what’s going to make you nervous?
But behind the jokes and superhero kit, Susan has battled low confidence and a dark and intermittent depression since childhood. She admits she has always put pressure on herself as a “perfectionist” and says low self-esteem over her looks is a major issue.
In her book Cheer Up, Love: Adventures in Depression with the Crab of Hate, she reveals how she self-harmed as a teenager, leaving her with lasting scars, which she hates. She attempted suicide at 16 and was sectioned in a psychiatric hospital.
Her depression has continued on and off and she reveals watching Strictly helped her manage her mood in the past.
She is a superfan who kept a photo of Kevin on her fridge (now replaced with one of them together) and cried when she was told he was to be her partner.
Those tears on the show’s opening episode suddenly make sense. “I have watched Strictly when I have not been very happy and it has cheered me up.”
Now, Susan aims to give others that smile – and it’s working. Her six-year-old niece has already sent her a snap of herself in Wonder Woman kit.
She said: “It is about letting go of inhibitions. Kevin is helping me out – he is a very positive person. I’m living my dream. This is the happiest I’ve been in ages.”
Kevin is helping me out. This is the happiest I have been in ages WSUSAN