In 2002 she gained a BA Acting degree from Edinburgh's Queen Margaret University School of Drama & Creative Industries.

I Nearly Paid My Licence Fee; however, her first major television appearance came in 1986 as a star of the sketch show Naked Video.

In between seasons of Naked Video, Smith also starred in the Scottish sitcom City Lights, which ran for seven years on the BBC.

Smith has appeared in the BBC dramas Two Thousand Acres of Sky and 55 Degrees North, performed alongside Helena Bonham Carter in the British film Women Talking Dirty, and toured Scotland with her stand-up comedy show.

Since 2015, Smith has presented a documentary-style show entitled Burdz Eye View, broadcast by STV, in which she tours Scotland with her comedy act and talks about Scottish life and culture.

For many years Smith was a regular in pantomime at the Kings' Theatre, Glasgow, starring alongside Gerard Kelly in performances such as Aladdin, Mother Goose and Sleeping Beauty.

She has also toured Scotland in straight plays, notably with Andy Gray, in The Woman Who Cooked Her Husband, Two and The Rise and Fall of Little Voice.

In September 2008 she began touring the UK in a stage version of the hit British film Calendar Girls, along with Lynda Bellingham, Patricia Hodge, Siân Phillips, Gaynor Faye and Brigit Forsyth.

The original cast left the show at the end of July 2009, but Smith returned in a different role as part of a national tour in 2010.

[3] She had previously been a member of the Labour Party but left due to its failure to publicly back the 1984–85 miners' strike.