WHEN it comes to preparing for her first full touring show, Susan Calman is positively scout-like.

“I’ll have my laptop and my box sets. Whenever I travel I take two things with me: one is a very expensive shower gel so that when I’m staying in rubbish hotels I can still pretend that I’m not. And I take proper coffee with me for a nice cup in the morning.”

But it won’t all be about lavish washing and luxurious hot drinks. There’s some serious work to be done.

The show she is taking on the road is a generous two-parter made up of a first half best-of from her Edinburgh Fringe work, while the second is her new show Lady Like, which traces Susan’s efforts to learn to appreciate herself.

“This show is saying you can learn to like yourself more. People can look at me and know that I’ve had a difficult time but I’m still here standing on stage. We all know as comedians how badly affected we can be by a bad review, but it’s all about positivity and I like to be positive. There’s so much negativity around these days. I think Twitter is an amazing, amazing thing but it can turn you on a pin, from happiness to despair. It was bad enough when I was growing up thinking whether I was good enough, never mind now. People just want a rise out of you but you can block them and move on.”

Calman doesn’t remember too much about her very first gig, an open spot at The Stand in Glasgow, but it didn’t take too long for her career to take an upwards trajectory. She reached the semi-finals of both the BBC New Comedy Awards and So You Think You’re Funny and was a finalist in the Funny Women competition.

“I’d never seen live comedy before I did my own first gig. My heroes were the Young Ones, French and Saunders, the Carry On films, and I really loved Joyce Grenfell, oddly enough. That was the kind of stuff I wanted to do: to tell stories. The Edinburgh Fringe really teaches you what kind of comedian you are and, more importantly, what kind of comedian you’re not. I’m not a one-liner comic and never will be. At the end of a show, I think audiences like to perhaps know a little bit more about that person and that’s the kind of comedy I like to see.”

Susan Calman will be at the Arts Centre on Sunday, May 31 at 8pm. Tickets are £15. To book call the box office on 01793 524481 or visit swindontheatres.co.uk.