Janey Godley’s Blog

I never thought I would ever write those words down in a blog but here I am. Let me take you back a bit, when I was growing up in Glasgow in the 70s and my dad let me hear an LP vinyl recording of Glasgow comic Billy Connolly- I have been hooked and love the man ever since. His story telling style hooked me and made me really interested in comedy.

 

When I went into comedy at the age of 35, the first press reaction was “Janey Godley is like discovering an early Billy Connolly” I was touched but a tad embarrassed in case the great man ever read that and was annoyed, as if he ever read about me? What a dick I am.

 

Anyway I have followed his career and been totally in love with his style and always regarded him as the best comic I have ever known. So I land in Wellington New Zealand for the Comedy festival to learn that the Big Man is in town and was staying in the same hotel as me and Ashley. To make matters worse, the hotel slip under every door every day a note about the weather and about comedy shows at the festival, so they slipped under his door “come see Janey Godley at the International Comedy festival and see why the press call her the female Billy Connolly” I was was horrified to know this! He would read that shit!

 

I had small dreamy moments, we would meet in the lobby and by some miracle we would be pals for life meeting up again!

 

I certainly had to stem the overwhelming desire to stalk every corridor and hunt him down, so I eventually gave the reception a copy of my autobiography ‘Handstands in the Dark’ with a short note to be sent to his room. The fact he may ever read my book would have been enough for me, I am not joking- it was that or I started hacking into the reception computer to find his room.

 

So, there was me and Ashley sitting having a cup of tea in the most beautiful hotel room we have ever been in and my phone rang.

 

“Hello Billy Connolly here” the Scottish voice boomed out.

 

“Get fucked you cunts, who is this? Is that you Terry Alderton?” I said believing it to be amazing UK comic who is at the comedy festival with us. 

 

“Nope, it’s me Billy, you want to meet in the lobby for a cup of tea?” he suggested, I squeaked a yes.

 

I ran about the room, pulling off my pyjamas and managed to pull a bra on outside in, run a brush through my mental hair, grab my bag and me and Ashley went racing down to the lifts.

 

“Mum for fucksake calm down, you look like Kathy Bates from Misery, he will be terrified you are going to hobble him” Ashley yelled as I managed to press all the lift buttons but the ground floor one.

 

Eventually after what felt like 45 minutes the lift reached ground floor and I spotted myself in the mirror and I indeed looked like a woman who had ran away from a hostage situation. I breathed slowly and walked calmly into the foyer. Billy Connolly came towards me dressed sharp and looking good and hugged me close “lets get tea” he said.

 

After introductions, Ashley got us a tea tray, said hello and the excused herself and explained she was going to see The Avengers and bid her goodbyes.

 

Me and Billy Connolly chatted for over an hour and I tried hard not to gabble and talk utter shite and managed to calm down, he has a way of making you calm and is a genuinely lovely man.

 

I met my hero and I totally fell in love with him, he is really attractive and warm to meet.

 

We laughed, we talked comedy, we talked art, we talked books, we talked Glasgow and then he said “I will come see your show tonight” I said “please don’t it would be like singing karaoke in front of Elvis” he laughed and said “I am a great audience member I laugh and I love comedy”

 

I didn’t believe he would come, not that I think he is a liar, I just thought he was being polite – so me and Ashley headed up to the San Fran Bath House venue in Cuba street. We explained to the ticket man that Billy Connolly might turn up and it felt like we were fantasists who regularly claim famous people are our pals! The man nodded and rolled his eyes!

 

The venue manager Ziggy was over the moon though and the staff were excited about the prospect of our lovely venue having such a star in....then I felt bad if he didn’t turn up, the prospect of sharing the room with me for an hour would disappoint them.

 

Billy Connolly came to the door and Ashley met him and walked him up. The venue was closed to the public and the staff were so overwhelmed yet cool as hell and made the big man and me a cup of tea.

 

The look on my punters faces as they rocked up to the bar to buy drinks and turned round to see Billy Connolly just tickled me pink. Ashley and Billy sat down shared pizza and the show started.

 

I was very aware as i walked out onto that stage that everyone one in that room knew Billy Connolly was sitting there watching me, I was aware he was sitting there....my long time comedy hero was sitting beside my daughter with hands clasped and staring at the stage. My heart skipped a beat, the light blinded me and i said “Hello Wellington, how are you?” and the cheer went up.

 

I did the show, I did my stuff, I riffed, I chatted to the crowd, I made good laughs and claps happen and I forgot he was there, I forgot Billy Connolly was sitting watching until I heard his big laugh and then my heart boomed again and the show went on....the show went great...there were some odd heckles which I embraced and which made the show better and soon the lights dimmed and I was standing in front of my comedy hero.

 

He put his two big arms around me, hugged me close and said “that was brilliant, you are so unafraid up there, you know the craft so well, there is no such thing as female or male comedy, there is just comedy and you are comedy Janey, the way you calmy held them in your hand and took them on a journey, everything was just amazing, well done” It was the best endorsement ever.

 

My heart swelled with pride and relief, I know even if I died he would have said nice things, but it was a good show and as a seasoned one woman show performer of over ten years I know the difference...it was a good ‘un. Thank GOD!

 

We went onto the balcony and he lit a cigar and then quoted all the bits he loved and replayed how they made him laugh and then I forgot he was a huge star and me, him and Ashley nattered for over an hour and then we walked back.

 

Here’s the thing, I thought Billy Connolly watching me do comedy was scary, no- walking through the busy roads of Wellington with Billy Connolly was terrifying – he doesn’t give a fuck about the GREEN MAN and he marches onto busy roads.

 

Ashley felt compelled to walk beside him and I ran like a wee hobbit behind them and visualised my daughter being battered by a car alongside Billy Connolly!

 

Him and Ashley were like big Highlanders tramping through the glens of heather, no sideways glances just big Scottish arms swinging and weirdly cars stopped as if in homage to their presence....me? they almost hit me and were annoyed I was in their way!

 

I can’t tell you how good a night I had and thanks Billy for coming and thanks to Ziggy and the crew at San Fran bathhouse in Wellington. You rock.

 

 

“They are not my guns” were the last words I heard myself say as the prison door slammed shut behind me. That slow realisation that this room with no windows and that smell coming from the ‘stainless’ yet somehow ‘stained’ steel toilet pan in the corner is ever present. What is that smell? I realised it was the mixture of bleach and shit -to be honest- the shit smell would have been fine but with a hint of bleach it somehow elevated the scent into a higher sense in my nose. My brain kept trying to make sense of what the conjoined smells were and that made it worse - bleach and shit were the two smells that remind me of that horrible night.

 

I stood in that small room that was painted a dirty mushroom colour; it had one shelf bed with a blue foam plastic mattress. The mattress when pressed emanated a new smell to the collage of stinks already in the room. I grabbed the grey crusty blanket and lay down. Then immediately sat up- how the fuck did I imagine I could lie down in this room and sleep like I was in some unusual hotel...I was in a police cell and I didn’t know when I was getting out.

 

I looked about and wondered how many people had slept there and if they had all managed a full piss into the mattress. I imagined men standing up and just pissing onto the bed with no care who may have to come after them. My fingers touched the rough blanket and I felt as though microscopic bugs were jumping onto my hand. I flinched and stared at the ceiling.

 

The looming sense of aloneness and my mild to middling claustrophobia made a sudden panic flutter in my chest as if a small, half dead bird was trapped inside my ribcage. I could feel my heart bang in my ears and my blood rushing through my veins, my gums tightened and my tongue tingled with the fear rising inside me. I almost screamed, but held back the panic as I knew my husband was in a cell near me and I didn’t want him worried about me.

 

“Excuse me, can I get a toothbrush in here” I shouted as I banged on the door. Eventually someone who genuinely looked like Les Dawson dressed as a woman came in through the door. I was surprised she wasn’t a police woman, why wasn’t she a police person?

 

 “A toothbrush? Where the fuck do you think you are? The Hilton?” she shouted, turned and slammed the door shut, I guessed she must have been some sort of police worker or someone who looks after female remand prisoners and I started giggling nervously as I recalled she really did look like a wee fat aproned woman from a 70s sitcom. Am sure she had a moustache and then I pondered what if she was a policeman who likes to dress as a wee fat woman at nights and I had disturbed him/her? Then I thought...maybe I should be worrying about this situation instead of finding something to giggle about. I was in a police cell for possessing guns and that was fact I had to face.

 

Yet weirdly all I could think about was “I really want to brush my teeth”.

 

I knew that my daughter Ashley was ok; I knew she was with family and I knew my husband was in a nearby cell as he was arrested with me. How could he not know his dead father had secreted weapons in his house the house we were living in whilst my own flat was being renovated. How could he not know this? I was so angry, and had to face it; of course he knew but didn’t bother to worry about it.

 

Circumstances and a woman scorned had lead me to that police cell, if my father in law hadn’t fucked some crazy bitch who after a long turbulent relationship with the family hadn’t showed the police a map of the back garden where she believed the guns to be.....I would be ok. But we weren’t ok. They found the guns.

 

In that cell for that whole night I still recall the feeling of horrible injustice. Those policemen knew those guns weren’t mine- yet they still locked me up overnight.

 

I lay awake on the smelly mattress with the scabby blanket and vowed to never take my liberty for granted ever again- after a sleepless night I was taken to the courts in Glasgow and released without charge. It was over.

 

It’s been years since all that happened and I have spoke about it in my comedy show and made funny jokes and stories surrounding the whole situation, yet it still haunts me.

 

The upshot of that experience back in 1994 is- I joined Amnesty International in an effort to help anyone who was dragged into a situation through others and innocently ended up in a cell.

 

I know I was guilty by association to the family, and my innocence wasn’t clear cut but many people are held against their will and don’t have proper representation or help so please join @amnestyuk on twitter and get involved with their projects.

Everyone nowadays has an opinion on the state of the nation’s diet. The government are worried that people are getting obese and that the generation from the 70s & 80s are feeding their kids too much processed food.

 

Let me take you back to the 60s when I was a kid and my mammy had to feed her, dad and four kids on a low income. People talk about how poor I was back then when they have read my book Handstand in the Dark, which charts my childhood in the East End of Glasgow, and it was tough- no denying.

 

Seven days a week, we ate a full plate of potatoes, cabbage, carrots and a tiny bit of meat (which was more expensive) and our puddings were fruit or tinned custard and bananas. We regularly dined on fish, fried lightly in porridge oats or cheap cuts of liver braised in onions with big potatoes and pots of tripe with milky sauce or plates of chunky cheap homemade soup. We ate leeks, mushrooms, turnip and a whole range of whatever vegetables were in season and didn’t really know any different. Sweets and eating between meals wasn’t possible as we didn’t have the money for that kind of luxury.

 

Back then kids didn’t have food allergies, and I didn’t know anyone who refused to eat greens!

 

I have just realised that how we ate is now the diet of the middle classes, the very diet we moaned about and vowed to change the minute we were old enough to earn our own money and buy our own food. We ached for deep fried fish and chips, which was a very expensive treat, usually only allowed if someone had died and there was no time to cook! It was pure emergency food NEVER every day consumed convenience food as it is now.

 

I recently discussed this with the US documentary maker Morgan Spurlock (he of Supersize Me film) who was really interested to hear this as he is making another food based documentary. It seems the poverty diet of the 60s was so healthy and yet we kids couldn’t wait to escape it!

 

Who here who reached young adult hood in the late 70s immediately started gobbling down Indian take aways and fried crispy pancakes with their own hard earned wages? Anything to escape the dire situation of ‘potted heid’ (cheap meat cuts in jelly) and horrible plates of corned beef and mash! I know I did- and that’s when I started gaining the weight that I would fight for the rest of my life to lose.

 

I didn’t know then that cheap cuts of meat braised with seasonal vegetables was the best diet in the world for me.

 

It stuns me when I meet people whose kids won’t eat a vegetable or even try fresh fish- Ashley my daughter has always had a great varied range of fish and vegetables in her diet and is also amazed when friends of hers have never eaten asparagus or savoy cabbage!

 

There has been medical evidence that kids today eat way too much white pasta as parents know kids love something basically tasteless and squishy will go down well, yet too much white pasta isn’t good for the colon and has links to bowel cancer as lack of fibre is something we all know about. White pasta has no fibre, we can swap it occasionally for potato skins or brown wholemeal pasta!

 

Unfortunately the previous generation of men and women who passed down hearty food recipes, like homemade soup and liver and onion casseroles are no longer with us or have gave up trying- and we now have millions of children who have never tasted oatcakes or lentil soup or turnip mash and broad beans and thats a shame.

 

I do understand that for the poorer people in our society that it’s cheaper to buy a big bag of frozen burgers and sausage rolls from Iceland than to start chopping and peeling turnip or getting a pot of soup full of split peas and barley on the go, as some of them have never tasted it, so why should they cook it?  Yet it is actually cheaper to eat vegetables than frozen convenience food, it just takes a bit of know how.

 

I wish that the older people in our community’s could get together with the younger generation at community halls and have cooking lessons and share the knowledge of people who knew how to cook good healthy food on a tight budget.

 

I know it’s a utopian idea but if pensioner Mary Berry can get the UK baking again with her TV show surely and older person on TV can get generations of people learning how to use pulses and cheap cuts of meat? We need to teach kids today that a meal doesn’t come in a box and maybe bring the heart disease and obese levels down?

 

I am now back to my old diet of bits of meat, fish, heaps of vegetables and no sweet treats or eating between meals and am losing weight and feeling good. Who knew my poverty diet was the one thing that would crack my overweight issues?

 

If you have any diet, help and advice or like me pretending to be a life coach occasionally follow me on Twitter @janeygodley

 

The last month has been pretty freezing here in UK and it’s a weird one when I keep explaining that “Yes, London can be colder than Scotland” people assume Scotland is the coldest place on earth and other people think “SHUT UP TALKING ABOUT THE WEATHER WHAT AGE ARE YOU OLD LADY?”

 

No longer discussing weather, let’s talk about my doctor who interrupts everything you say with “mmm really?” before you have finished a sentence. It means I end up talking really fast and get my symptoms in before she goes “Mmm really?” and pisses me off...there is nothing worse than a sympathetic nodder and interrupter although worse is the people who say what you are saying at same time.

 

My hairdresser used to do that till I changed and went to someone who didn’t try and finish my sentences off for me by using the same obvious words as me- for example I would say to her “so yeah sometimes it’s hard to blow dry my hair on my own as its (she would chime in with me) ‘hard to reach round the back” then for the rest of the day she would say the end of my sentences with me.

 

Sometimes I would lure her into a false sense of security and then SWITCH what I was going to say to fuck her up – like I would say “So it’s nice staying so close to town as you can just WA... (She would get ready to chime in ‘just walk in’) but I would switch it to “Just watch people catch the bus” and that would throw her off and she would stare angrily at me in the mirror. It became a game tying to get her to believe I was going to say some well-worn cliché then fuck it totally up and leave her mumbling.

 

In the end she gave me a particularly angry geometric cut when I asked for a trim and we parted ways- I still see her through her shop window nodding and finishing peoples words off for them like a greedy word gobbler. I don’t like her anymore. My new hairdresser doesn’t say anything and does my hair as I expect and has never tried to finish off my sentences, but she does sing Adele loudly and badly.

 

I don’t mind people who voice an opinion, like the man from the travel insurance wing of the motoring company AA who called me about a quote I racked up on their online site. He asked why I never bought the quote they offered and I explained “Too expensive” he asked where else I had looked and I gave him a price a website offered me, he asked “which company offered you that?” I read out the name and website of that company and he said “no wonder it’s cheap, I have never heard of them, do they exist?”

 

I was quiet when he said that and I asked him “have you ever heard of me?” he replied “No” to which I said “Then how do you know I can pay for the quote...do I exist?”

I suppose getting existential with an insurance quote man isn’t funny, but he annoyed me.

I need to stop getting easily annoyed at stuff.

 

So here we are almost halfway through February and I am off to Boston Massachusetts for the WOMEN IN COMEDY FESTIVAL with my pal Shirley and then off to NEW ZEALAND COMEDY FESTIVAL with Ashley!

Meanwhile here is some local news.

 

Soon I will be going back to The Calton to donate a painting I created called St Thenew, she was St Mungo’s mother and drowned in the Clyde. Am sure you may recognise the parallels with me anyway Thenew housing next to my old pub is being officially opened and they requested the painting and that I do the honours of opening the offices. I am so touched and I still love The Calton- here is a wee column I wrote about it in 2007.

 

In GLASGOW'S east end there is a small area called the Calton. It has been included on many political agendas due to the level of poverty and drug abuse that is prevalent there. News reports of the decaying housing and devastating health issues have prompted promises of regeneration from all parties.

Yet people don't know how positively human and wonderful the place actually is. The history that surrounds the area is inspiring, and some of those fist-banging politicians would do well to recognise this.

 

I lived in the area, which sits snugly between Glasgow Green and the Gallowgate, for more than 15 years, and loved the place.

My daughter was born and raised in the Calton and, despite having lived most of her adult life in the fashionable west end of the city, she is intensely proud of her east-end roots.

The hard-working women of the Calton were a core influence for me. They set up drug support groups and childcare play schemes throughout the year.

 

I was in awe of them and they welcomed me in with open arms to their community when I became a mother.

I renamed our local pub The Weavers Inn after I had investigated the history of the district.

Just off the main London Road is an ancient graveyard. The gates are old and cranky, the trees are overgrown and the place is in a state of disrepair.

Many of the headstones are scrawled with graffiti or have been knocked over.

But the most important thing about the graveyard is that the Calton Weavers who fought and died for better wages are buried there.

 

On 30 June, 1787, a meeting of the weavers was held on Glasgow Green. Their wages had dropped because of the increased importing of cheaper textiles from abroad and most of the workers decided to strike, although some weavers accepted the lower wages and carried on working.

 

This was a desperate situation for many of the people. To be without employment and wages resulted in them being evicted from their homes and seeing their families go hungry. Yet the striking weavers stood strong and took on the might of the authorities.

The dispute eventually came to a head on 3 September, 1787: violence erupted after the strikers tried to seize materials from the weavers who had carried on working despite the low wages.

The military were called in and a detachment of the 39th Regiment of Foot opened fire on the demonstrators.

The strike was broken.

Six of the men killed at the scene were considered martyrs and some of them were buried in the Calton Cemetery. The families of the men were so poor that they could not afford a headstone, although a century later a memorial was raised to commemorate their actions.

A group of local people are currently fighting to preserve the graveyard, to cherish the memory of the martyrs and also to educate the local youngsters in their historical roots.

But there are also plans by Glasgow City Council for parts of the Calton to change their postcode to the swanky city centre G1 code, to attract more lucrative investments.

 

The Calton doesn't need a facelift or postcode change, it needs support. Government officials and politicians should be investing in local housing and enriching the lives of the people who live in the Calton, instead of pouring money into the upmarket private housing expansions that skirt the fashionable side of the Glasgow Green.

 

The people of the Calton should value their rich socialist history. Caltonians need to recognise that some ground-breaking and talented people came from their streets; people such as the poet and songwriter Matt McGinn; the rock band Gun, who toured with the Rolling Stones, and Davie Bryce, who set up the innovative drug support group, Calton Athletic, to name but a few.

 

We need people to stop pointing the finger at what went wrong in the Calton and remember the people who fought for a better life there and died for that very privilege.

The very roots of Scottish socialism were nurtured in the streets where my daughter was born and that will stay with her for life.

If only those Calton Weavers were up for election again I know who I would vote for.

 

If you have any diet, help and advice or like me pretending to be a life coach occasionally follow me on Twitter @janeygodley

 

“No thanks, am not really into getting my Chakra’s aligned, I have just recently relocated my ovaries thanks” I said to the hippy looking woman who boldly sported a shock of white hair.

 

She was younger than me but was brave enough to resist Wella number 5 hair dye, am just not ready to ‘come out as grey’ some women can carry it off and their families accept them being grey, not for me, am staying in the Wella number 5 closet.

 

I don’t look sexy and natural with grey locks; I look like I might milk goats & live in a static caravan site or have walked off the set of a Dickens show set in Newgate prison and am the old woman with two days to live.

 

This hippy grey haired woman Desdemona (I swear that’s her name or she changed it on Twitter or something similar) met me in a cafe and immediately decided I needed her help getting my aura and chakras sorted out. I really needed a cup of strong tea and a bacon roll.

 

“Do you have headaches and trouble with your stomach?” she asked sagely as she gripped my hand and massaged between my thumbs and forefinger, making my stomach hurt. Doesn’t everyone have headaches and stomach pains? Come on they must do eh? But her eyes were imploring me to agree with her about headaches and stomach cramps; I stared at the woman making bacon rolls.

 

The constant massaging on the web between my fingers was making me quite violent.

 

Turns out Desdemona used to be called Sheila and had been a fish gutter in Aberdeen till she met a bloke at Glastonbury who gave her an ‘experience’. Am not sure if what he did was consensual but she seemed to like sharing her skills. I got up and walked away- starving and determined to get my roots done.

 

You see I don’t mind ‘alternative therapies’ but there are some I would avoid – like getting hot stones stuck to my back, somehow that reminds me of the shit my big brother used to do to me when I was 7 years old in the sticky summer days in Glasgow.

 

Some women love spa therapies and it helps them unwind.

 

They way I relax and it is truly better than any spa ever, is hanging out & staying with my best pals Monica or Shirley. We can lie on the sofa, eat nice food, talk shit for hours and shout at the telly, then sleep for ages and wear nothing but sloppy clothes and not bother to wash hair or wear make-up. Just having great one on one time with my pal and talking, debating, arguing processing issues that bother me is so amazing and ultimately relaxing.

 

Good pals are better than alternative therapists or personal life coaches. Good pals tell the truth about you horrific dress that you think is lovely, they also refuse to let you leave the house with that eye shadow you think is ‘on trend’.

 

Good pals can resolve sexual, marriage and career issues better than any single mantra filled nut-job who charges for every single piece of faux advice they batter out.

 

There’s a bloke I know who pays a shed load of bucks to a life coach who had previously worked with astronauts at NASA- he loved telling me this fact- as the coach apparently personally helped those chosen moon walkers to gain the wherewithal to fly into space.

 

I asked him “what did he do? Point at the moon and say- go there?”

 

He was really annoyed and said ‘to fully get the best from a life coach you had to be willing to give yourself up to fate and face the challenge’. That’s what every single newborn does naturally when he slips from the amniotic sac and faces life, isn’t it?

 

The reason am banging on about this subject is- I have decided to lose weight and try to get myself fit and everyone told me I should get myself a personal trainer, full time nutritionalist and motivator. I don’t disagree and had a great chat with a bloke from Kaizen Fitness in Glasgow and this month and am not ruling it out. But firstly am going to see if I can possibly try to do start it on my own. As at the end of day, if I can’t make myself do it, trust me nobody else will.

 

If you have any diet, help and advice or like me pretending to be a life coach occasionally follow me on Twitter @janeygodley

 

“Why are you old and have funny hair?” my great niece Julia asked me as she stroked the evil cat she calls a pet. She is only five and doesn’t understand that I am allowed to still be alive and she also doesn’t know that genetically she just might inherit my bushy fucked up hair. “Why are you still alive little cheeky face?”

 

 I laughed back and she quickly replied “I am alive coz I know the numbers of days I have left and I know yours as well” she stared intently at me with big eyes, then walked away as she squeezed the cat firmly under her arm and banged the window with one angry fist and a pigeon flew off in a startled flappy panic.

 

I think she might be Carrie from the horror film.

 

My point is Julia is a funny wee kid; she is startlingly blonde with the bluest eyes and has the weirdest off beat sense of humour which makes me happy to be her auntie, sometimes she tells me she can hear my bones moaning. That’s not a sentence many five year olds get away with to me, but I love her.

 

 My bones are moaning by the way, I am at that age when a noise happens when I bend down sharply to pick up something as small as a hair grip or try and brush the back of my bushy fucked up hair. My arms are like stiff doll arms – it’s an age thing!

 

So 2012 is upon me and I have to better organised, and by organised I mean I need to stop hiding paperwork under the couch and actually physically dealing with it.

 

Everyone makes so many New Year resolutions; mine are to stop dreaming that one day I will get to do physical expressive dance to Supertramp live on TV and time to focus on real life and quit imagining that George Clooney will like touching my boobs.

 

These are some of the things am planning to stick to-

 

I am going to try and catch the postman everytime he slides a card in my letterbox telling me I wasn’t at home to receive a parcel, as he tiptoes away from my door with my parcel.

 

 

I am going to make a concerted effort to stop shouting at my husband when he gets up to go to the loo in the middle of the night and knocks over the washing basket. And I promise not make that huffing noise when he splashes on the floor round the loo bowl.

 

I am going to stop rolling my eyes everytime my daughter Ashley talks about William Shatner and I promise I will stop pretending he has died and I had heard it just then on the news.

 

I will definitely try and book rail travel 300 days in advance so that a simple cross country train journey doesn’t cost more than a daily drug deal for Oasis circa 1997.

 

From now on I will stop buying clothes that fit a woman called Gwyneth who is thin, willowy and doesn’t live in my house and start buying clothes that can fit my body which is the shape of a sturdy yet stumpy box.

 

I will stop shouting FUCK OFF CUNTS at the TV when anyone called Kardashian or Jersey Shore or TOWIE comes on and will calm myself down by pretending William Shatner is dead and telling this to Ashley, you see that’s a big distraction as I have explained before.

 

I will give up moaning about the phenomenon that is cupcakes- ok here is my last rant, they are just muffins with glittery expensive icing- stop charging £5 for that shit ok?

 

So there we have some of my intentions for the New Year. Hope you like them and if you get bored follow me on twitter @janeygodley

(Please be aware that this Podcast Contains strong language)

 

 

In episode 77 of Janey Godley's podcast the mother and daughter comedy twosome discuss their favourite things of 2011. Janey tells us her favourite moments in comedy, music and books and Ashley reveals her top movies, TV shows and music.

 

Ashley debates a suicide issue that was in the news and recalls her experience with a stalker. Janey gives us the rundown of her night performing comedy at Corntonvale Women's prison. Both podcasters reveal their favourite moments and regrets of the past year. The round up of podcast questions and Ashley's sexual encounters make it a memorable episode.

 

Mother and Daughter comedy team get to natter and the world gets to hear it on Janey Godley’s podcasts, expect some bawdy language and home truths, as Janey Godley and Ashley Storrie lead you down the roads less taken in their fantastic weekly podcast. Listen as mother and daughter banter, bait and burst with laughter. 

 

Janey Godley Podcast at: Episode 77

 

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You can find all the info regarding Janey’s live shows by just clicking Gigs!

 

If you would like to support this podcast then please do so by clicking onto Our PodOmatic page and donate via the PayPal link on the right hand side of the page. 

 

I hope you enjoy our Podcasts it would be great if you would pass it on, thanks Janey Godley & Ashley Storrie.

 

I was in London recently and just love getting time with my pals and catching up. Also getting the chance to do The Set List show at Soho theatre was just absolutely amazing. It’s a show where the minute you step onstage you are handed a piece of paper that tells you the subjects your gig will be based on. It’s a bit like jumping off a cliff naked in front of the people you desperately want to impress and have your period at the exact moment you bend your knees to leap off the edge. If you have ever had that dream you are naked and can’t use the buttons of a phone to get out of the street filled with people staring at you? Then that’s the feeling The Set List gives you and the only way out is to talk funny and make people laugh to get you out of the situation. I did it.

 

Monica my dear pal cheered and laughed all the way through and gave me a big hug as I walked off stage and thanks to Paul Provenza & the Set List team for the chance to do the show again.

 

I do love a walk down Oxford Street to see all the bright Christmas lights and look in the windows and feel that wonderful seasonal excitement. Though we don’t really do much Christmas stuff now that Ashley our daughter is a fully fledged adult- I do miss the feeling and get nostalgic at rosy cheeked kids in red mittens all giggling queuing up for Santa photos.

 

The other weird thing is when am doing Christmas comedy gigs, and the all jingle Christmas songs are on....I quickly realise that all these songs I was singing to in the 80s were out when most of the staff weren’t even alive. I am old. That’s official.

 

Christmas gigs can be notoriously difficult as people get raging drunk and have no interest in your funny stories....there is nothing better to bring down your comedy swaggering ego than to stand onstage and get whacked by a turkey breast on the shin bone as you almost reach a punch line.

 

Just a head’s up to people being dragged to a comedy night at Christmas party works night out, if you don’t like comedy and hate shutting up- just refuse to go and if you are a drunken person that hates comedy and likes throwing food? Please stay at home and whack yourself with a ham in private.

This time of year in Glasgow the drink and party season is in full swing, I watched two girls in astonishingly high platform shoes (that actually looked like surgical wear) hold onto each other trying to cross a road and fall like timber in front of moving cars.

 

Luckily they crawled onto the pavement dragging their Lulu Guinness bags and Jimmy Choo’s onto the vomit spewed pavement. One of them had a black hair piece that fell out and washed away in the gutter and she scrambled on bloodied knees trying to save it from going down the drain. Classy.

 

The other phenomenon on freezing winter nights in Scotland is the sheer amount of young men and women who refuse to wear a jacket, the two drunken girls I just mentioned were in thin shiny fabric off the shoulder dresses, it was 2 degrees below freezing in Glasgow. I don’t ever recall going out disco dancing in the late 70s and thinking “it’s snowing out there am going to find a sleeveless short dress and ditch my winter coat”.

 

Maybe I am old now and this is the way old people talk, but seeing young guys in thin tee shirts standing in the snow literally shivering and trembling with mild hypothermia makes me wonder- what makes them do that? Do you not get laid if you own a jacket nowadays? Is that a new code- wear a coat never get fucked? When did that happen?

 

My other bug bear is fragrance adverts on TV at this time, I really don’t understand them especially if you watch them with sound on mute. It basically is a woman in a torn billowing frock with smudged eye makeup running down an alley then caressing the bricks and staring into the distance- she looks sexually assaulted but then she sticks her fingers in her mouth and a cat jumps off a trash can and she stares at the moon and then clutches a bottle of perfume? What the fuck is that about?

 

So here we are almost at the end of the year and my blog is becoming more and more sporadic – I am feeling weird about life. Another year gone and I still don’t know where my career or life is going; shouldn’t I have all this shit figured out by now?

 

No is the answer, I don’t know much at all despite getting to this age. I only know when its cold- wear a jacket.

Employees use Registered Charities Twitter account to Bully.

 

(I deleted this earlier but read again as there are further kinks to this story especially at the end)

 

Last week I got into a robust twitter debate with a woman from www.mckeeconsultants.co.uk  who specialise in diversity and equality. Anyway the lady online persistently demand that as she is a feminist she was entitled to know on why I openly use the word ‘cunt’ online. I told her that I didn't need to explain myself to her nor anyone and refused to justify my language. I then expressed how ironic it was that a feminist was demanding a woman explain her words. I refused to explain my motives to her and will always do so, as I don’t believe I should have to explain my vocabulary to anyone.

 

My twitter profile says “The most outspoken female stand up in Britain” (Daily Telegraph). I cannot give you the timeline of McKee Consultant’s tweets as she deleted the entire argument (such was her commitment to her own words), though I do have a screengrab of them. In the middle of this twitter debate a person from the charity Sky Project in Kilmarnock (they recently asked me to be a patron to their kids charity) added to the debate by saying “You are a patron of our children’s charity. Would you say these words to our young people?”

 

I responded to Sky Project by saying something along the lines of “I don’t think coming online to question my motives is professional and I can always un-patron” I couldn’t understand why suddenly a charity I have been dealing with got into this twitter debate of the word ‘cunt’.

 

Firstly I felt Sky Project were questioning my ability to work with kids because I say ‘cunt’ (I have never put myself up as a child role model THEY asked me to be patron) and secondly why are they getting involved? Then I quickly realised that McKee Consultants and Sky Project are friends and contact each other regularly. Fine- I thought, she is sticking up for her pal McKee and now she has lost me as a patron. That’s what happens when you use a charity’s registered twitter feed to have a go at people, no big deal.

 

I opened my twitter a day later and there was a tweet from a children charity Hill House Care http://www.hillhousecare.org/  that said “Calling yourself a comedienne is an insult to all things funny, Call yourself a children’s role model? Hope not”

 

Now I was stunned, I genuinely don’t mind people calling me crap and unfunny, it happens a lot to be honest on twitter but for a registered charity to come online with this unprovoked attack annoyed me. Yet again it mentioned my ‘children’s role model’ (which I am not) and so a very short blast of past tweets revealed yet again that McKee Consultants, Sky Project and Hill House Care were all linked together and friends on and offline.

 

Then @hillhousecare1 deleted the offending tweet and sometime later spouted stuff about freedom of speech and then deleted that as well! (See a pattern emerging? Offensive tweets- delete-delete?) So there we have it, I got into a debate over the word cunt with a woman and her mates waded in under the guise of the charities they work for and had a go at me. My online friends all took exception to the tweets and many complained to Hill House Care and some of them were pretty verbal about a charity being used to slag me off.

 

So then Hill House Care and McKee consultants both claimed cyber bullying. (Sky Project who may have a more clever person working their social media apologised and backed off). To date Hill House Care has never apologised and both they and Mckee Consultants have deleted their tweets regarding me. Yes they did that old nugget of the passive/aggressive world of “we got into an argument, lost it and now claim aggression in our direction” how professional?

 

Again at this point I’d like to re-iterate that my anger is at the charities public accounts being used to insult me, not the insult itself. In terms of insults I’ve been called a lot worse… but never by an anonymous person hiding behind the guise of a children’s charity.

 

So the upshot is, I feel bullied by a children’s charity! I have written to Hill House Care and want their board of directors contact details as I believe the person reading my complaint might be the actual tweeter- so the best way to get to the bottom is to let the charity commission know that a charity is using its status to have a go at people.

 

By the way- Hill House Care claim on their website to be ‘Non Judgemental” and McKee Consutlants claim to promote “equality and diversity” I have NEVER claimed to be a child’s role model.

 

So after I posted this blog today I got an email from Mckee Consultants and apologising – which I accepted and I accepted the apology from The Sky project- as of yet I haven’t had an apology from the person who actually tweeted from Hill house care. The tweets all came from a mother, a sister and a daughter in the same family.

 

After I deleted the blog to let the dust settle on the issue I got an email from a journalist and school teacher called Douglas Bane who sent me an email titled “Scottish comedian forces children's charity to close because they said she wasn't funny”.

 

He went on to do a hatchet job on my character BUT went onto paint the women who wrote the tweets in such a naive, innocent way and it emerges I am the woman who is singlehandedly getting the charity shut down- in fact he makes it seem, it was always my sole intention- here is an excerpt of his email about me- the one he intends to get published.

 

"The attempt to smooth ruffled feathers came too late. By this time some of Janey’s followers had taken up the story and were spreading her “horrific personal abuse” version.

 

Unaware of the full story and unwilling to trawl through the archives, two board members of the second charity, resigned at the weekend. The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations withdrew its support. Prospective funders have pulled out. As I said, Janey has influence"

 

Now I have never contacted anyone regards getting the funding cut and those who know me, know this would hurt my soul.

 

So I sent a statement to the journalist who strangely gave me the offer to change the end of the story and the headline to "Janey Godley steps in to save struggling children's charity"

 

So I spoke to the woman from The Sky Project who in fact is the least of all offenders in this weird story, she apologised last week after her slightly hurtful tweet and it turns out she knows Douglas Bane the journalist and in fact they used to be in a relationship together.

 

She asked him to ‘help’ and his way of helping was to threaten me with a rotten unbalanced article about me. He is also a physics teacher and works in education!

 

I feel his part in this was to put the ‘frighteners’ on me and hope that I would back down and delete my blog. Well Douglas you obviously don’t know me well enough and if anyone else in the press wants to pick up on this wee debacle of story do let me know. BTW I am still getting emails accusing me of trying to 'break people' instead of 'letting this go'. They somehow have become the victims and I am the bad witch.

 

Sometimes the word cunt doesn’t quite get across what I mean today.

 

 

(Please be aware that this Podcast Contains strong language)

 

In episode 72 of Janey Godley’s Podcast the comedy mother and daughter team chew the fat over The Leveson Inquiry which deals with press invasion, Fatima Whitbread’s appearance on I’m a Celebrity reality show and The TV phenomenon Mrs Browns Boys. Ashley has some fascinating stories about a rapey ghost, an ashamed burglar and a satanic date gone wrong.

 

 

The Bold Alec does Mills and Boon, Salam Rushdie gets a lambasting and Terence the man pillow gets a mention. Janey and Ashley answer the many podcast questions and Janey gives us an insight to her performance at the recent Children in Need.

 

 

You can find all the info regarding Janey’s live shows by just clicking Gigs!

 

 

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Janey Godley Podcast at: Episode 72

 

 

I hope you enjoy our Podcasts it would be great if you would pass it on, thanks Janey Godley & Ashley Storrie