Bucket list? That can getin the bin
Scots comedian Godley has no interest in skydiving or climbing mountains as she faces down terminal diagnosis. But the 63-year-old is penning memoir to remind her daughter of the life they’ve shared
COMEDIAN Janey Godley might have been handed a diagnosis of terminal cancer but there is one thing the actress and stand-up is clear about – she does not have a bucket list. For others, such news might see them furiously compiling a list of places to see and ticking off things they’ve always meant to do.
But not 63-year-old Janey. She said: “People keep asking me, ‘Have you got a bucket list...?’ There isn’t anything I haven’t done. I don’t want to jump out of a f*****g helicopter or climb a mountain ... I’ve done everything I want to do.”
Instead, she has been busy penning a new memoir which starts from that 2021 ovarian cancer bombshell. In November of that year, she shared the news on social media, posting a picture of herself in a hospital bed. She was later givein herself the all clear before announcing in December 2022 that a recent scan showed signs of the disease in her abdomen.
Janey have been undergoing immuno-therapy( which helps someone’ s own immune system recognise and attack cancer cells), and explained: “My cancer number is really high, which means it’s active.
“But they can’t find it on the scan, which means it’s in there somewhere, but it’s back in hiding from me.”
The book is, she says, written to her adult daughter, comedian and writer Ashley Storrie, her child with husband of more than four decades, Sean Storrie.
Janey said: “That was the intention. It was a love letter to my daughter, to tell her it might not be the longest life but we’ve had a great time together.”
Born in poverty in Glasgow in 1961, Janey went on to become a regular co-presenter on BBC Radio 4’s Loose Ends, as well as fronting BBC Radio 4 series The C Bomb, written and presented with Ashley. This isn’t her first book – others include childhood memoir Handstands in the Dark and novel Nothing Left Unsaid.
She found viral fame with her dubbed pastiches of first minister Nicola Sturgeon’s coronavirus news briefings during the pandemic but her career hasn’t been without controversy.
After offensive tweets by her came to light, the
Scottish Government coronavirus adverts she featured in were pulled. Janey profusely apologised for the tweets and donated the fee she was paid (£12,000) to charity.
The memoir covers the time she won the inaugural Sir Billy Connolly Spirit of Glasgow Award at the 2023 Glasgow International Comedy Festival. It’s The Big Yin she refers to as her “hero” in the book.
She remembers meeting him for the first time in New Zealand. She heard rumours they were staying in the same hotel for a comedy festival and when she got a phone call from someone with a “familiar Glaswegian accent”, she initially couldn’t believe it was him.
The two eventually met up, with Janey recounting in the book: “Billy and I chatted for over an hour. I managed to calm down and tried hard not to gabble and talk utter s***e. He has a way of putting you at ease – he is such a warm, genuinely lovely man.”
When considering Billy’s influence, she recalled watching TV in her childhood. “It was all Monty Python,” she said, adding: “And it was all men dressed as women. I never saw anybody that sounded like me.
“So I didn’t think comedy was for people like me. And then this man with long hair, and big wide flares of all many colours and platforms and not wearing a suit and telling a joke... I remember coming to the TV and going, ‘Somebody sounds like me’. And that just changed my life”.
Anyone who has seen Janey’s shows will know she swears. In fact, there’s a chapter in her book just about swearing. “Does my swearing sound worse because I am a working-class Scottish woman?” she wrote. “If I was an Oxbridge graduate, wearing a tea dress and swearing onstage, would it be seen as ‘edgy and gritty’, like a hipster getting angry at a flat tyre?”
So did she ever feel pressure to change herself at all? She said: “When I was doing Radio Four, I wouldn’t swear, because I knew that would be the first thing people would pick up on.
“They wouldn’t hear the comedy, they would just hear a Scottish woman swearing, because that’s all they’re f ***** g good for. If you watch stuff like Fleabag or any TV show or comedy, where it’s fine if you’re, you know, Katherine Ryan.
“I love all these people. But they can get away with swearing – Dara (O Briain) can say feck but if I say f**k, it sounds as though I really mean it in my accent, so I get so annoyed at the hypocrisy of swearing.”
That aside, Janey has loved her career. She said: “I don’t find comedy difficult. I think it’s the easiest job I’ve done.” She does, however, admit her work has had its downsides, saying: “I regret lots about how I raised Ashley, there was things I should have done better.
“I should have been more present with her instead of working all the time, I should have been more present with my dad when the stepmum died – all my regrets are about not being present because I was always working.” But that’s the main takeaway she wants people to have from her memoir, saying: “I’m deeply flawed, like everybody else.
“Everybody is deeply flawed... But we’re all just getting by.”
Janey: The Woman That Won’t Shut Up by Janey Godley is published by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £20. Available now.
If i swore on Radio 4, people wouldn’t hear comedy. They’d just hear a Scottish woman swearing
JANEY GODLEY ON DOUBLE STANDARDS