Janey Godley: a remarkable comedian who built a career on her own terms | Janey Godley

NNobody has done a comedy quite like Janey Godley. It wasn't just about her background, which in turn became the currency of her live performance – her childhood poverty (“a world of almost Dickensian misery,” as one Scottish newspaper described it), her marriage to a notorious gangster Glasgow family. Her career trajectory is also noticeable. Other comics make a name for themselves online, get into standup, and then do something else. Godley did it the other way around, starting live comedy in her 30s as a departure from (or, as she would argue, an extension of) her bar work. But she made the biggest splash in her fifties, with a series of viral videos that brought her – and her broad Glasgow comedy – into the center of Scottish public life.

My earliest experience of Godley's work was on the outskirts of Edinburgh, where – as a middle-aged woman from Glasgow's working class – she rightly claimed to be a vulnerable minority. Godley's work always placed this life experience front and center – which is not surprising, considering that she offered material (on child abuse, weapons caches and organized crime, for example) that few other comedians had access to. There was a confident fearlessness to her comedy, and for good reason: “If I stand in a room with 600 people and talk for 15 minutes and no one laughs, that's no worse than having a gun held to your head.” And I’ve had that, so it doesn’t really scare me.”

Although she was a comedian to be reckoned with – Godley knew her own voice, enjoyed it and could nail a wicked joke – she was never a darling of critics. Her performance was characterized more by the topics he addressed than by the way he addressed them. Which was fine with her: she wanted to please audiences, not comedy snobs, and appeared at the Free Fringe in Edinburgh to spread her performances to as wide an audience as possible. And yet, over time, the cultural seal of approval also came to them. Images of her lone protest against the US president's visit to Turnberry Golf Course in 2017, armed with a “Donald Trump is a cunt” poster, captured progressive hearts. Then came her groundbreaking Internet voice-over videos, dubbing recordings of Nicola Sturgeon and others in her own uncompromising Glasgow patois.

The resulting sketches, sometimes made with her comedian daughter Ashley Storrie, intended to reveal what oppressed politicians were really thinking, marked a powerful foray into the traditionally urban terrain of British satire by a working-class female voice. (Check out the post reproducing Theresa May's resignation speech to the House of Commons, where the gap between dialect and environment is so stark it could make your nose bleed.) They have also been credited with bringing Scotland through the Lockdown has helped and brought Godley to the forefront of national treasure status. She was commissioned by the country's National Theater to lead Scottish Government public information campaigns. However, she lost the latter role and was sacked from a panto in Aberdeen in 2021 when a series of racist tweets came to light. A month later, Godley was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, still at the center of the media-political storm.

Undoubtedly, those ugly social media posts for which she apologized tarnished Godley's egalitarian image. They mar but do not overshadow a remarkable career in comedy, not to mention her work as a playwright, memoirist and novelist. Standing firmly in the great tradition (Billy Connolly, Frankie Boyle, Kevin Bridges and beyond) of gruff and uncompromising Glasgow stand-up, she harnessed the gallows humor she needed to get through the first half of her life, to thrive – to to make her way into an industry not normally open to women of her background and to entertain thousands. Godley's career as a comedian was all about living life on her own terms, and that will be fondly remembered.