Susan Calman says she did not know who she was until 40

Susan Calman said on Radio 2 that she did not know who she was until after 40, and the confession sat at the center of a raw exchange about why Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide makes her cry. The Scottish comedian linked the song to regret, time passing, and the years she spent trying to be someone else.

Radio 2 and Landslide

Calman spoke to Vernon Kay in the Tracks of My Years slot all week, and on Thursday morning she said Landslide always made her cry. “It’s the passing of time,” she said, adding: “It’s the regrets I have of not enjoying my life because there are times where I have not enjoyed my life and I should have.”

She then put the feeling in plain terms: “Why didn’t I? Why didn’t I enjoy that moment travelling around the world? Being in beautiful places and not loving what I was doing because of something stupid.” Kay pressed her on what she meant, and she answered: “Yeah, I do, and I’ve always known. The problem with my mental health issues is I’m completely aware of them.”

Before 40 and after

Calman said the shift came late. “I don’t feel like I became who I am and comfortable with myself until I passed 40,” she said. “It was terrible before I was 40.” She also said, “I didn’t know who I was and I was trying to be someone else.”

That is the sharpest part of the story: the emotional moment on air was not a one-off reaction to a song, but a summary of how she now reads the first part of her career. The source places that beside years of trying to fit the kind of comedian who would turn up on Mock the Week or Have I Got News For You?, a lane she later realised was not hers.

Calman in her fifties

Calman is now in her fifties, and the article also notes a particularly disastrous Fringe run in 2011. Put together, those details make the Radio 2 exchange less like celebrity confessional radio and more like a late-career reset in public: she is describing not just sorrow about a song, but a long adjustment in how she sees her own work and self-worth.

For listeners, the practical takeaway is simple. Calman is saying the pain attached to Landslide comes from time passing and from years she feels she wasted by not enjoying experiences she was already having. The song did not trigger a new revelation; it exposed one she says she has carried for years.