Comedy stars play it for laughs as they keep it in the family
NEVER A QUIET DAY FOR MUM JANEY AND DAUGHTER
JANEY GODLEY and her daughter Ashley Storrie – together – two of the greatest (and funniest) gobs in Glasgow, for one interview?
Now, there’s a challenge. Will the comedians compete for airspace?
Or will the double interview, as is usually the case, produce half the revelation, due to increased self-awareness?
We’re inside their modern flat in Glasgow’s West End. It’s practical (scatter cushions are prohibited) but with fashionable distressed paintwork on the doors. Or at least I figured it was.
“We stripped the paint off the doors a few months ago and jist never got around to painting them,” says 56-year-old Janey, grinning. “We don’t need fancy.”
The ladies don’t need painted skirting boards either but are they generally in harmony when it comes to comedy?
“No!” says Ashley in loud, dramatic voice, grinning.
“I call her Kim JongJaney, because she can stand in front of this huge contingent of followers who love her, even when she gets on stage and just says ‘Mind when you had a dug?’, and they fall about laughing.
“I almost want to walk in front of them with a placard saying ‘The word “dug” is not the joke!’ But the bitch can pull it off.”
Ashley adds: “She is all creative brain, and I’m logical brain. For example, she can fling paint onto paper and see what happens. Since the age of three I’ve been terrified of the idea of a blank sheet. I’d cry in Art Class ‘cos I’d sit for a solid hour and do nothing.’ I need to know what I’m going to write on it.”
Two different women indeed, but connected by the need to connect with an audience.
Janey broke into comedy after years of telling funny stories to the Calton bar regulars.
Ashley, now 30, watched her mum gig and took to the stage aged 11 when she told her first joke about Barbie having bulimia.
She went through a range of jobs before taking to college to study film, then moving back to stand-up.
However, Janey didn’t encourage her daughter into comedy. “We let her make her own choices,” she insists.
But let’s go backaways, Janey. What of this little creature Ashley who became a comic. Was she planned?
“I didn’t want to have a baby,” she admits. “I was six years married and I kept putting it off.”
Was the pregnancy a mistake? The “mistake” leaps in: “No, I was a marriage Elastoplast,” she says, and they both laugh in agreement.
Janey continues. “I didn’t want a baby but He (the unnamed husband) convinced me we should try. I came off the pill for one week and I fell pregnant in Newquay – appropriately enough. But we had no idea what we were doing with a child.”
Why did Janey and Him choose to send their offspring to a private school, given their working class credentials?
“Well, I left school before I was 16 because I had no shoes to wear,” says Janey. “It was that simple. I felt education was super important. So we sent the wean to Laurel Bank (in Glasgow’s West End).”
The Wean kicks in at this point; “Bull****! I was an experiment, not a child. And what about the crazy stuff you did? No sweets. No birthday cake. And where did the child vegetarianism come in?”
We’re heading into Mommie Dearest territory now you suggest and they both laugh, taking the heat down a notch.
But who’s the parent in the relationship? Janey admits her daughter