I hired Janey for the comedy night I ran about 5 years ago, when she wasn't that well known, so it's good to know that she's doing so well. She recently won an award for the best performer at the Edinburgh Fringe. As you'll see from the two comments, there are a number of people who just can't stand her, but I found her ability to make funny from situations rather than jokes the best part of her performance.
Here's a 3 minute interview with her on Tommy Sheridan's radio show from yesterday.
Wild world of Janet Godley by Brian Beacom
eveningtimes.co.uk
ACCIDENTALLY spreading swine flu around the world, causing the death of a pensioner and finding a stigmata imprinted upon her leg . . . Yes, it can only be another episode in the life of Glasgow comedian Janey Godley. The comic who grew up in the Calton and stars at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival next week is renowned for taking the more bizarre - sometimes disturbing - periods of her life and translating them into stage comedy with great effect.
Janey, who wrote a best-selling autobiography, has already revealed a life of managing a pub in the East End, containing vibrant stories about gangsters, abuse and nits. And she still enjoys a life that's as colourful as a kaleidoscope.
"I got swine flu a couple of months back," she reveals. "I took off to LA where I had a meeting with an agent to talk about writing for American television. And then I took a plane to Auckland in New Zealand, where I was performing for 3000 people. But on the flight over I got talking to a really nice Mexican guy, and I think that's where I picked up swine flu. The thing is, even though I had all the symptoms, the raging temperature, the sweat running down the back of my legs, the pounding headache, I didn't know what caused it.
"I just put it down to women's problems, compounded by the travel demands of a 12-hour flights. I just didn't think about swine flu. Yet, I suppose part of me didn't really want to think about it because I would have had to go to the doctor in New Zealand and they would have had me deported!"
Janey managed to get through the gigs in New Zealand. "I don't really know how I managed to perform. Normally I'm really energetic but I was exhausted. Funnily enough, my dad has just had Skype attached to his computer and he kept calling to talk to me, often in the middle of the night because he may know stuff about computers but he still hasn't worked out time differences. Anyway, I wouldn't switch on Skype at my end because I didn't want him to see how bad I looked. I was a scarecrow, I was Baggie Annie from the fishmarket. I looked horrendous."
Janey's gigs were a success, picking up five stars in the papers. "If only they knew the reality that I was in fact Typhoid Mary, a carrier of a killer virus, a one-woman genetic weapon." Typhoid Mary then headed to London. "I performed to 300 people a night at Jongleurs Comedy Club. But I still felt ill and called the doctor and reported the symptoms. Then a lady asked where I'd been recently. Funnily enough, even though I said I'd been to Los Angeles, Wellington, Auckland, as soon as I said I came from Glasgow they said they'd get a swine flu testing kit sent out to me. It was as if Glasgow is the epicentre of all known disease. God knows why."
Janey has more dramatic fuel to fire up her coal-black humour. "I killed a pensioner in Fife," she says, deadpan. "Back in February I was working in Pitlochry and trying to get to the Highlands, but the train lines were blocked with snow. So I decided to head back to Glasgow. When I got to the ticket office the train was in the platform, so they held it up for me to get time to buy a ticket and board. But eight minutes after the train left, an old man crossed the line and was killed. And then a guard came up to me and looked me right in the eye and said if we'd left on time we wouldn't have killed a man. I was gutted. He looked at me hard, with cold blame in his eyes. And I felt terrible. Then the police came on the train and asked why the train hadn't left on time. I just felt so awful. I was living an Agatha Christie story, Murder on The Queen Street Express."
Janey's bout of mea culpa may be slightly misplaced, but it provides her with audience material; there's black comedy in a story that involves a train guard staring critically at a comedian who's caused a train to be held up - and by extension, a death. There's also fun, in a stage sense, to be gained from her experiences with the homeless.
"At the meeting in Los Angeles the agent asked what I'd been up to during my stay. Casually, I told him I'd been hanging out with homeless people on Venice Beach. He asked why and I said I wanted to meet real people, not Hollywood types who are all show and no substance. And I said I loved the homeless in Los Angeles because they were so tidy. They were fed up of being accused of being wasters, they picked up all their rubbish and dumped it. They're like Wombles. And every night they'd walk me back to my hotel to make sure I didn't get mugged.
"This agent looked at me as though I were mental. What? Homeless people?' I said yes, and I even filmed them for my blog. He looked bewildered and so I tried to explain that I once worked in a pub in the Calton. I like people who are shouters, a bit loud. The homeless are who they are. A bit like Glaswegians. What I didn't add was that as the sun went down they'd start screaming about Jesus or whatever and biting themselves, but during the day they were great."
Janey has yet to find out if her comedy lines will make it onto American television. "The whole meeting was surreal, like an episode of the LA comedy Entourage (now on ITV2). And you know, when I walked outside they were actually filming the series. I think I'm an extra in it."
And the stigmata? How did she come to be marked by a sign from Christ? "Oh that one has a lot to do with my imagination," she says, grinning. It turns out she was partying a little too hard with some friends in New York when she fell asleep in a pal's garden. She said: "Like every other garden in Queens it is like Lourdes, full of Catholic idolatry. I'd fallen on top of her big crucifix, broken it and laid there for hours. The next morning I woke up and there was this huge sign of the cross and a picture of Jesus on my thigh. I yelled at my pal, 'Christ has left his mark on me! And I'm not even a Catholic!'."
# Godley's World, The Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh Fringe, August 5-31.
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