Crown Court Hotel, Inverness, 19 January 2007

Janey Godley.

IT’S PRETTY HARD keeping up with Janey Godley. Her best selling autobiography, ‘Handstands in the Dark’, her numerous stage appearances as a stand up, and her award-winning online blog all add up to an impressive output by anyone’s standards.

For Godley, though, that’s only half the story. She is also a playwright, has begun writing fiction and now has a column in ‘The Scotsman’.

She brought her Edinburgh Fringe show, ‘Good Godley’, to Inverness as part of Eden Court’s Theatre in Exile project. Once on stage her energy was immediately apparent as she launched into a stand up show that veered from her complaints about the weather to her struggles with her hairstyle and on to reminiscences of her troubled childhood and marriage into Glasgow’s underworld.

Many stand ups draw from the difficulties of their backgrounds to find humour. For many it’s an eccentric Dad or an obsessive mother, but for Godley this journey is much more difficult. Her childhood was scarred by sexual abuse and constant violence, culminating in the murder of her mother. It is a measure of this woman, of her refusal to be defeated by such horrors, that she is able to coax a brilliant humour from such darkness.

Such difficult subjects can make an audience uncomfortable but, in Godley’s performance, her determination to get on with life and to enjoy the talents she undoubtedly has makes the journey easy.

What I found most refreshing in her comedy was that, although she talked of her upbringing in the grinding poverty of Glasgow’s slums, she had an amazing ability to laugh with and not at the folk around her.

She was able to talk openly and honestly about the deprivation of her background but never once resorted to the patronising and derogatory “Ned” humour that is so popular amongst many of the middle class, well educated comedians who abound in Scotland’s comedy clubs.

In Inverness I suspect that she met a much more reserved and respectful audience than she is used to performing for as the seventy or so folk, who almost filled the venue at the Crown Court Hotel, clearly enjoyed the show, but were quiet during the first half of her act.

It was a cold night in Inverness and the room felt pretty chilly as Godley took to the stage, but by the end of the show both the venue and the audience had warmed up and she was beginning to open up with the kind of banter that she clearly excels in.

Towards the end of the show she shone as a comic and her obvious joy in acting out her mother’s confrontation with a pompous teacher was an unforgettable piece of comedic magic.

For a few minutes she was an eight-year-old girl once more, bullied by her teachers and rejected by them as another worthless product of working class Glasgow. Her mother’s outrage at the world’s treatment of her small daughter was something Godley clearly treasured as an outward display of her mother’s love, even though that display came in the form of a clenched fist.

Perhaps only stand up comedy could have offered Godley a way of finding her voice. In stand up there are no class barriers, it does not matter where you were educated or if you can quote Shakespeare. The only thing that matters is that when you pick up the microphone and begin to talk people laugh, and Godley certainly brought a great deal of laughter with her on Friday night.

Her joy in life radiates through her performance, and that she was able to share some of that joy with her audience is a tribute to her abilities as a comedian. Janey Godley is an irrepressible human being, the worst things that could happen to anyone have already happened to her, and laughter has clearly been her salvation. It may be that creativity is her way of coping with the trauma that she has endured but that does not detract from her brilliance as a comedian.

I was left with the feeling that comedy is perhaps too small a world for Janey Godley. She is already branching out into serious journalism and the creative whirlwind that surrounds her is still gathering momentum.

It may be that comedy is only her springboard and that she will finally make her mark in another genre. Perhaps serious literature or powerful social drama will be Godley’s eventual creative outlet. One thing is certain, we will be hearing more from Janey Godley, and this is one Ned who will set the record straight.

© John Burns, 2007

Links

• Janey Godley
• John Burns audio interview with Janey Godley