The Scotsman Festival Sessions: Karen Dunbar on her Bafta win
Welcome to the Scotsman Sessions, a series of short video performances from artists all around the country introduced by our critics. Here, ahead of her upcoming run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, comedian Karen Dunbar tells the story of her recent Bafta win
Winning a Bafta last year stirred a range of emotions in Karen Dunbar, which, as she discloses in her Scotsman Session, weren’t altogether wholesome. A Bafta Games Award for her work on the computer game Still Wakes The Deep, it may have led to “eff aw!” further jobs in the sector, but Scotland’s latter-day Renaissance woman has enjoyed “a great run of work post-win, which is maybe a coincidence, maybe not...”
Right now, she’s still bathing in the afterglow of “my highlight of 2026 so far”, a weekend DJing to 10,000 people at the Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival, the ultimate realisation of a promise she made to herself during the Covid-19 pandemic, that “if we’re ever allowed to be in a room together again, I’m gonna start a DJ night”.
This weekend, she’s bouncing from the sublime to the ridiculous, fronting the glorious karaoke caterwauling of Almost Angelic in support of Marti Pellow at the Kelvingrove Bandstand in Glasgow, after she and co-star Tom Urie blew up on TikTok. Angelic are back on screens soon too, as is MyAmi Nails, her new BBC Scotland sitcom about a garage mechanic who inherits a beauty salon. And she’s reuniting with Pellow onstage for Scrooge the Musical in Glasgow this winter, in which she plays The Ghost of Christmas Past.
“Oh my God, I actually cannae wait!” she enthuses. “I’m a huge fan of Marti, have been since my teens. I used to fancy him.” Though, she says, “that shifted when I discovered I was more attracted to Belinda Carlisle...”
Before that though, she's got a trio of Edinburgh Fringe stand-up dates, ahead of a national tour next month. “Trying new stuff and buffing up the greatest hits for the road!”
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The 55-year-old has mixed feelings about belatedly embracing stand-up, because it offers “a freedom, a space to create, brilliance or keech” that other artforms can’t match. “No-one’s waiting for me to feed them a cue line. I can go off-script ’cos there’s nae script.”
That’s no small consideration for an actor who once prided herself on her memory but has drastically curtailed her theatre commitments because of difficulties remembering her lines after she hit menopause. Stand-up has “been great really getting my teeth into, developing it as a full-time gig. But I’ve had some phenomenal experiences in theatre too” she points out. “Doing Shakespeare in New York with Meryl Streep in the audience ... I wouldnae have got that in stand-up.”
She looks back on her acting career in Chirpy, taking her flowers from fans, after admitting she was too anxious making The Karen Dunbar Show to fully appreciate it. “I’ve felt a bit sad I couldn’t enjoy the journey while I was on it” she says. “But that’s not unusual. It doesn’t matter what job you’re in, it’s only enjoyable in hindsight.”
Still prone to nerves – “there are times I can hardly breathe, other times I walk on like I’m going to Asda” – the versatile Dunbar reckons herself to be a proper “variety” turn, having grown up “watching Saturday night TV with comics, singers and men spinning plates.
“I always wanted to get on telly, thought that would fix all my problems. Which it did. And then gave me a whole load of new ones!”
Karen Dunbar: Chirpy is at Just the Tonic Nucleus (Venue 393), Edinburgh, from 21-23 August as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, then on tour, see www.breakneckcomedy.co.uk. Scrooge the Musical is at the SEC, Glasgow, from 12 December until 10 January
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