麻豆社

When she’s not sashaying around the floor, Susan Calman worries. She worries about why she wasn’t made a Sixer in the Brownies, what she should wear if she ever meets Gillian Anderson and vacuums her flat at 2am to combat her insomnia. She’s also paranoid and has a phobia of clogs. Yes, clogs.

If anyone needs to calm down, it’s Calman. So, in , four media friends helped her – Phill Jupitus took her to an art gallery, she went on a spontaneous holiday with John Finnemore, Muriel Gray helped her get in touch with her wild side on a hillwalking expedition, and she sat through hours of cricket with Andy Zaltzman. So what are her tips for keeping calm?

Cricket’s inherent Englishness is a little off-putting for Susan, but she goes there anyway, in the jolly company of comedian Andy Zaltzman. Surely cricket’s slow-moving pace must be relaxing? Unfortunately, it’s the very slowness of Test cricket that Susan finds stressful. Throwing maths into the equation only makes it worse.

To help soothe her angst, she tries to empty her mind and concentrate on the “nothing” that is unfolding on the pitch in front of her. Using this meditational approach, she does find herself enjoying it. She practises her “cricket clapping”, appreciates the lack of queue for the loo, and finds herself so utterly relaxed, she falls asleep. Cricket, she decides, is the perfect anti-stress device.

Hillwalking, or climbing up “a big piece of earth” as Susan puts it, seems particularly pointless and frustrating, with the added fear of not being near a pleasant toilet, a big bugbear of Susan’s, because of the amount of water she drinks (due to her worry about dehydration). Remote locations mean no mobile reception, which could result in her missing the call she’s been waiting for – from Strictly: “What if I miss my opportunity to dance with a handsome Russian man all because I’m having fun on a hill?”

In the brisk company of Muriel Gray, she tries a climb near Loch Lomond (“That’s huge, Muriel!”). Between the midges and the mist and the groaning, Muriel questions Susan as to why she’s going at the walk like a “pit pony released from a mine”. It emerges that Susan gets through walks by pretending to be Rambo, which gives her a sense of purpose and keeps her frustration at bay: “I conquered a peak that I thought was too steep for my tiny little legs and I did it in style.”

Susan Calman and John Finnemore enjoy a board game on holiday.

Susan loves routine, likes to know what she’s doing, how long it will take and what it will involve, and hates surprises. She likes to plan spontaneity six months in advance, so she’s not a fan of holidays (her wife had to threaten to divorce her to force her to go on holiday) and spontaneous holidays, even less so. When comedy writer John Finnemore suggested a spontaneous holiday without having even fixed on a destination, her blood pressure went through the roof.

However, with John’s encouragement she starts to find it relaxing. “If heaven exists for me, it will be in a board game café in Oxford,” she says. In between developing an enormous crush on John, she comes to terms with relinquishing control, and realises that having no plans doesn’t mean having no direction.

Susan’s problem with art galleries is the silence and the people in them. Phill Jupitus suggests that she listens to music on headphones while she peruses the work in her own bubble, and that she should not try and absorb all the paintings, just note a few that have resonance for her and then spend some time with them.

Kelvingrove Gallery with Massive Attack on her MP3 player finally convinces her that this is a good way to relax. Susan finds a painting she likes, although she doesn’t know why, and simply stands in front of it for half an hour. “It took me a while to realise I was smiling and I was swaying a bit. I was a smiling, swaying idiot in an art gallery and I knew somewhere in the world Phill Jupitus was probably doing the same thing. You should join us some time, it feels really rather wonderful.”

Test match cricket, a climb up a hill, a spontaneous day trip and a wander around a gallery – follow Susan’s tips to attain her level of Zen-like calm... If Calman can, anyone can.

Keep Calman Carry On returns to Radio 4 for a second series, Thursday 7 December at 6.30pm.