Saturday interview: comedian Susan Calman

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.

Susan Calman teams up with Jennifer Saunders

Susan Calman has won a part in Jennifer Saunders's new sitcom, which is set in a women's prison.

Sud's Law was a panel game about soap operas, hosted by former EastEnder and Dirty Den slayer Tracy-Ann Oberman who also devised the show with Linda Marks.

So long as soaps continue to be incredibly popular the idea has potential, although its success will very much depend on tightening up the writing and maintaining the calibre of guests. On this occasion, it wasn't actually the Soap actors who made the programme worth a listen, but Susan Calman who amused with her impressive medical know-how gleaned from her obsession with Casualty, Holby City and Doctors.

Susan Calman: Comics never die on TV

Do you want smooth stand-up with reliable jokes? Or would you rather watch one person with a microphone try to control a riot?

I wasn't planning to review this show but things changed for reasons you will soon discover.

The long running satirical panel game, currently hosted by Sandi Toksvig, has been running since 1977, and last week saw the start of its 74th series. This week's guests included regular performers Jeremy Hardy and Susan Calman, semi-regular Will Smith, and journalist Matthew Parris.

There were some topics that you would expect to be covered, such as the royal wedding, super injunctions and Libya, but then it came to the subject of tuition fees, and how most universities are raising them to extortionate rates.

Among those are my old university, Teesside University in Middlesbrough, which this week announced it was planning to put up its fees of £8,500. As you would expect, they took the mickey out of the region. Parris said that what was actually going on was that they were actually selling the whole university for £8,500.

Smith said that £8,500 tuition fees were a status thing, but argued that if this was the reason that they should just change the name to "Oxbridge University of the North" or "Hogwarts".

It cost the university £20,000 to change its logo and the name of the establishment to "Teesside University" from "University of Teesside", so £8,500 is nothing, really. Toksvig at the end claimed that if anyone was offended, the £8,500 includes, "a whole row of terrace houses."

To be honest with you, I was shocked when I heard them talking about Teesside in such a fashion, because I am amazed that anyone on BBC Radio 4 has even heard of Teesside.

I didn't mind The News Quiz mocking my old university, though. I'm just glad it got the publicity, even if it was not the most glowing publicity. To be honest, when I heard that the fees were going up, I was on Twitter arguing the raise was impossible; because no-one in Teesside has £8,500. (It's true - I'm currently writing this on a Windows 98 in a skip near a Starbucks, leeching onto the Wi-Fi).

The News Quiz show is still entertaining after so many years, and because it is on at 6.30pm, it mocks the news two-and-a-half hours before Have I Got News for You does. Well worth a listen.

Northern naughty-texter Manford stretches the definition of "rocks" with a musical line-up of crooner James Blunt and drab Iberian ballad prince Enrique Iglesias. Luckily the comedy is much stronger. Russell Kane, Lee Nelson, Pete Firman and Susan Calman join the mighty punster Tim Vine, author of such efficient rib-ticklers as "Velcro: what a rip-off".

News Quiz: the clink is going to shrink

Here's an advance dose of tonight's News Quiz, featuring Susan Calman, Jeremy Hardy, Henning Wehn and Sue Perkins. After Justice Secretary Ken Clarke announced the closure of three "outdated and expensive" prisons, Sandi Toksvig asks German stand-up Henning Wehn for an analysis.

Watch: Radio 4 comedy in Edinburgh

Here's the quite lovely video that the Radio 4 comedy gang shot on The Royal Mile at the beginning of the Edinburgh Festival. You'll see Paul Merton, Mark Watson, Nicholas Parsons, Susan Calman, Stephen K Amos and others entertaining festival-goers on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

What you didn't hear because of the fire alarm

On Monday's MacAulay and Co which came live from Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the EICC, the fire alarm went off during the show. We were able to film Fred and sidekick Susan Calman come back from the brink and treat the audience to exclusive chat.

Susan Calman's comedy recommendations

Comedian Susan Calman, whose stand-up show 'Constantly Seeking Susan' is playing at the Edinburgh Festival, gives her pick of the stand up shows to see this year.