Last week, my ears decided to totally block up with bricks of wax. Yes, I produce more wax than a queen bee and my ear then cuddles it all around my ear drum and making me deaf. This was a pain the ass as I had a lot of work this week, you try doing a charity auction half deaf!

The people at the Boisdale Club in Belgravia London really helped me out, they raised hands to pledge cash, love those nice folks, but the tartan carpets were odd though. You always know you are in England when you see hundreds of tartan throughout a building.

I then flew home half deaf picking at the ear, filling it with ear drops (which are more expensive than crack per fluid ounce) I now have a healthy ear drop habit, they don’t work. You know what works? Nothing, just in case you were interested, I filled my gungy ears with that stinky expensive fluid and all that happens was that it all ran onto my neck.

I had warm up work for a sitcom called Life of Riley. I needed to hear; I ran to my doctors to get an emergency appointment and was seen by a woman I have never met before. She was either Latin American or faking a funny accent to add a frisson of excitement to my ear examination…or maybe I couldn’t hear her properly. “Are you Spanish?” I asked.

“No, am Asian, is there something funny about the way I speak?” she snapped at me. I had now insulted a woman who was about to poke a big shiny pointy thing into my ravaged tender ear hole, that will learn me.

Apparently the wax STILL hadn’t softened enough for them to syringe it. The wax in my ear is made of titanium steel and is refusing to let the expensive stinky drops soften it down. Perfect.

“When will it be ready?” I pleaded.

“Three weeks or maybe never” she shouted at my ear.

Must remember to never get Asian people mixed up with Jennifer Lopez, my ears are doomed. So I went home and syringed them myself, fuck it.

So some wax did come out and I can now hear enough to get by.

The warm up work was awesome and tiring at the same time, asking people to laugh at the same joke on set can be weary, but that audience were amazing. Met the lovely Caroline Quentin who helped me out a few times, by coming over and chatting away to the studio audience, and that helped when they got bored of me talking.

I didn’t have to fly to Southampton this past weekend as the Jongleurs comedy club there has shut. I will miss the gig but Southampton was a pain in the arse to get to from Glasgow, so am enjoying a weekend free.

Well I am actually working tonight in Glasgow and managed to fill in the gigs, but the news I am trying to convey is this- I get to stay at home for a weekend!

I am struggling with the no smoking….well actually I started smoking again that’s how much of a struggle I was having. Now I am OFF them again…wish to fuck I could just kick the damn habit.

Some breaking news, I am now selling my autobiography ‘Handstands in the Dark’ through my website and you can click and buy it there www.janeygodley.com

Comments

As soon as I walked onto the platform at Glasgow central low level trains, I was greeted by a child’s voice shouting “fucksake” really loudly.

I spotted a young mum looking harassed and trying to deal with a wee toddler in a pram. The baby girl was about two years old and absolutely stunningly gorgeous. She had big amber eyes with thick long eyelashes, a mop of curly blonde hair and cheeky dimpled smile, she caught my eye and shouted “Fucksake” really loudly at me and giggled. I never made a move, inside I was laughing as it was really funny to see a baby say this, but I kept a neutral look on my face.

The mum bent over and tried to shoosh the baby, she then stood up and said “I am really sorry she won’t stop saying that”

“Just ignore her, don’t fuss when she says it and just keep talking to me” I replied as the baby shouted “fucksake” over the top of us talking. People on the station started to stare with disdain at the mum.

The young mum explained “my brothers taught her this and I can’t stop her, she shouted it at the woman in Marks and Spencer’s and at the ticket man upstairs, I am mortified”

“The reason she keeps saying it is because you react so violently or there are shrieks of laughter, she does it because it gets her attention, she is performing and knows her best punch line so well and it’s a solid bit of material, I know I am a comedian and that’s what we do” I said.

The mum and I kept chatting and ignoring the “fucksake” that resonated round the station, eventually the baby stopped shouting it out. She then started to point at other things that caught her eye as soon as she realised her punch line was getting no reaction. I told the mum to give her brothers a good kick in the bollocks about teaching a baby to swear and to completely ignore the “fucksake” until the baby finally gives up on it.

After my ‘parent advice class’ I got on the train to Hamilton.
At the station I spotted a poster for a beauty salon called
‘YA BEAUTY’ which made me giggle, and then there was an advert for
‘THREE BABY BEARDED DRAGONS’ which were wee lizards up for grabs. I love local adverts, they are just awesome.

My favourite was an advert for babysitting which stated in bright red ink marker

‘I LOVE KIDS AND HAVE NEVER BEEN FOUND OR CHARGED WITH TOUCHING THEM AND AM AVAILABLE FOR BABYSITTING’

I can’t think of anyone who would let that person near their kids!

To round off my week, last Friday I went up to Montrose to do a corporate gig and had a great fun night. The weather was horrific during the night, the wind whipped the trees bare and the rain battered the south east coastline of Scotland. I was worried sick, as husband and I had to get up early and head back to Glasgow for my flight to London and I hate travelling in storms.

I sat there in the dark of Montrose at about 4am and willed the weather to change, and sure as hell at 7am Montrose was sparkling in the autumnal sunshine! We managed to get to Glasgow airport in time for my flight to London.

I had a wonderful gig at the 99 club in Leicester Square, but woke up in London with my left ear totally blocked. I hate that, it is like being underneath water; it makes me partially deaf and hurts like hell.

I had an audition in London and went along half deaf, I was worried sick they would ask me questions and I wouldn’t catch what they said. It went all right and I am hoping I did get the job.

So am back in Glasgow and still have one deaf ear, husband is pissed off repeating everything, and daughter is now miming things to me and asking me questions in the form of physical theatre and dance. Hopefully my ear will unblock or the doctor will revise his ‘we don’t syringe ears’ policy and help me out OR a car will hit me on the head and my ears will pop.

Comments

Whatever site you are reading this on, please enjoy and accept my heartfelt thanks for all the support, here is my 1000th blog…

Nut Brittle and frayed tempers…

I love Lidl as the moment, their fresh trout and their low fat frozen yoghurts are the best I have EVER eaten in my food noshing life.

“Excuse me do you have nut brittle, I got it here last week and it was in your Greek produce section, where is that been moved to?” I asked a podgy faced man in the fresh veg aisle.

He pointedly ignored me and carried on talking about some bank loan he applied for to a wee red haired bloke who was stacking up Christmas cards against chocolate flavoured Santa’s.
“So, I called the bank and they have refused my loan…” he droned. I watched the red haired bloke bend down deeply into the display as if he was trying to hide inside it. Podgy face carried on regardless, his bank conversation needed to be aired.

I walked off and decided, rather than do my usual thing and argue with spotty penniless podgy man, I went in search of the nut brittle on my own.
I got absorbed in my wee Lidl shopping experience and as I turned into another aisle I stumbled yet again on the podgy bank loan refused shelf stacker, he was still droning onto the red haired man “So, I then asked to be put through to head office and they kept me…” at that the red haired bloke leapt up and screamed “Shut the fuck up you annoying smelly bastard”

The red haired man threw a big tantrum and started to pull down all the Christmas trees and boxes of cards whilst screaming at the top of his voice “Fuck you Colin”. Fat podgy man (who I assume is Colin) stood there aghast, and then decided the best thing to do was run away from the devastated Christmas area and leave red haired man to explain himself to the manager who was fast approaching having dashed from the Polish fish display.

Just at that moment the woman from Afghanistan who sells the Big Issue outside (she is called Tick Tack- I swear to God that’s what she told me) well anyway her dog which is called ‘Bad Dog’ got off its leash and ran towards the melee and bit the poor ginger haired shouty man, then tried to rape a Christmas tree by humping it hard with it wee pink tongue hanging out.

Chaos ensued, Tick Tack started running after Bad Dog and chased it back out of the store and ginger man had to be calmed down. The Lidl is just so crazy on Tuesdays – I found the nut brittle, it is so delicious you should try it.

So after my Lidl experience I headed up to Easterhouse Platform Theatre ‘The Bridge’ and got some posters prepared for their display, ticket sales are going great and you can come see the show on November 14th, just call 0141 276 9696 or email them info@platform-online.co.uk for tickets, give them your details and they will get back to you.

Am still reeling about the closure on some Jongleurs comedy clubs after a take over of the company last week, loads of comics, staff and management have lost- jobs, cash and future work and I am just hoping they all recover at this difficult time near Christmas.

Comments

Secondly I LOVE the way Irish people say ‘wee’ all the time.

“Do you have a wee key to your room? Do you want a wee help with your case? Do you have a wee credit card so we can have a wee swipe at it?” that’s awesomely lovely. I also flew on a wee plane called Kevin Keegan (yes it really was called that) and couldn’t stop giggling that I was inside Kevin Keegan and arrived at George Best airport, football players are so big in aviation.

The Ulster Hall was just lovely and I did enjoy the Amnesty gig, all the people were so bloody good onstage.

So after all that I went for a ‘wee’ cup of tea outside Oscars champagne bar in sunny/rainy Belfast. It didn’t look like a champagne bar as it actually sells Danish pastries and breakfast buns. I just sat my arse down on a wee seat when a woman sat opposite and called me a cunt for no good reason. She then told me all about Frank in 1967 and how he was a cunt as well. She had a mullet hairdo and skin that look like crumpled tin foil that had been flattened out but refused to go smooth, I called her Scary Betty. She had the haunted eyes of a woman who could set fire to trees just with her memories. Her continual rant never stopped when my niece Ann Margaret called, in fact she could hear Scary Betty in the background.

“Aunty Janey, I can hear a nutty woman in the background are you sitting beside a Looney?” She asked,

“Yes, I am” I answered, Scary Betty leaned over and whispered “Tell her to go fuck herself”

“She can hear you Ann Mags, you’re not really helping by talking about her” I giggled.

Scary Betty stared hard at me and then a great thing happened, three Asian men sat down. Scary Betty shut up, she knew that shouting at them would be really bad, so went back to hissing filth at me, as me being white could not take offence to her abuse…apparently!

Eventually the waitress came out and told her to leave, Scary Betty stood up and told the Asian men that nobody likes their music (which was the least racist thing she could say) I meanwhile breathed audibly and went back to my newspaper. The smell of stale sugar puffs magically disappeared as she left and that was just a bonus.

Bigger news was taking afoot but I didn’t know that, though I was about to find out. Jongleurs comedy clubs had a big meltdown. If you are unfamiliar with Jongleurs they are a comedy chain that hire loads of comics every weekend and huge amounts of staff in their popular clubs.

Apparently, and I am not sure of the entire facts, but the company got bought out and it means that in the hand over five clubs have been closed for good. Nottingham, Southampton, Bristol, Oxford and Bow have been shut. I was gutted as I am booked into Nottingham this weekend, any way my personal grief gave way as I realised that almost 200 jobs have been lost, throughout the company. I will miss all those lovely people who made me welcome and who always checked my happiness levels before I went onstage. Bless all those poor folks who have lost their jobs, I wish I could do something for them. I am thinking of you all as Christmas approaches.

So therefore I have the weekend free, and will have some weekends to fill but am not that fussed as I am a comedian and will pick work up anywhere.

On another note, I am looking forward to Christmas as I am going to be home this year and near my dad. I love him and he will need me this year as he is alone, it will be nice to share it with him.

Also have a big audition coming up in London and will need all the luck I can get for that one!
Speak soon.

Comments

As I was walking through sunny scary hotbed of terror that is Leeds, I sat by the little river and took in the view. A man approached wearing inappropriately short shorts, you know what I mean, over 40s mens shorts should be below knee, under 20s men shorts can be showing some clam if they want, they are young and their skin still fits them. This man was in his 50s and was grossly over weight, the shorts were disgustingly tight, and I couldn’t stop staring at his crotch which is disturbing to say the least.

Of course saggy ball man sat right beside me on the lonely tow path, what else do you people expect?

“Lovely day isn’t it? Do you like robin red breasts?” he shouted into my face, I realised he look a bit detached and possibly slightly special needs.

“Erm…yes they are nice” I stuttered.

He then pulled out a Christmas card with a robin on the front and shoved it in my face. “Nice” I said and prepared to leave. He grabbed my arm to sit back down; I looked anxiously around for some help as tight short baggy ball man might throw me into the river.

“My name is Barry and my mum is dead” he whispered.

Now, in my head all I could think was ‘has he just killed her?’ or is he disturbed because she died years ago?…I was getting scared by the minute…I always imagined how I would die, but I never thought I would end up in the river at Leeds by a fat man wearing shorts wielding a robin red breast Christmas card.

“My mam died years ago and she gave me this card” he said as I sat back down and his arm was gently now resting on mine.

I suddenly didn’t feel scared, I felt sad for him. We chatted for a while and he told me things about his mam and how she used to sing to him and after she died he lived in a big home and made pottery.

His speech was rather stilted and childlike and I didn’t feel threatened. Then we just sat in the quietness and he had a wee sleep! Yes, he napped as he clutched a Christmas card in his hand. After about half an hour I heard a woman shouting at us along the pathway. She hurried up to us as he jolted awake.

“Barry, what have you been told about wandering off?” she shouted at him. She wasn’t being angry more concerned and I explained he had been sitting with me chatting. Barry was all confused and stuttering out sentences trying to explain himself.

“Barry was having lunch with us at the river side pub along there and just disappeared, didn’t you Barry?” she calmed down, but still looked harassed.

He got up and staggered a wee bit, I think he was tired. The woman just took his arm and walked him off. They got about 30 feet away when he turned and shouted “Bye Katherine” at me. Nice to know he paid attention when I told him my name! I hope Barry had a nice day.

I walked slowly back to the flat and noticed that Leeds has its Christmas decorations up in the town centre.
IT ISNT EVEN HALLOWEEN PEOPLE!
Either that town is obsessed with Christmas or they want to shove Christianity down everyone’s throats and wipe out their reputation as a town that breeds bombers of the Muslim fundamentalist nature.

Now don’t everyone comment and write hateful things about me slagging off Leeds, just don’t shoot the messenger, by the way as an addendum to that four counter-terrorism detectives have been arrested for allegedly abusing corporate credit cards to claim up to £120,000 in fraudulent expenses while gathering intelligence after the 7/7 bombings.

Is everyone corrupt?

Either way I had a great weekend in Leeds, and I had fun.

Comments

I have also discovered something about people today. I am stunned by the written language and the way younger kids use the internet. Let me explain, there is the tragic story of two young girls who killed themselves by jumping off a bridge near Glasgow. Now the minute they died, their mates all went to their Bebo networking site and started to leave messages on the deceased girls’ pages.

The thing that struck me was the text language used by teens as they left messages for the girls who died. I read this on one of the girls Bebo page “Hunni, ets pure rbish that yer deed, a dinny know yay were hinnking aboot dain that”

Which is translated as “Honey, its pure rubbish that you are dead, I didn’t know you were thinking about doing that”

There are loads of messages in this text speak and it was quite compelling to read them, it is like a code that you start to understand slowly. Hunni= honey, gr8=great, Geeiz= give us.

Writing messages to the deceased is a relatively new phenomenon; it’s a bit like when people wrote on the memorial books for Princess Diana when she died, except its people writing on a website to dead people as if they can still read the messages.
I recall my mate waiting hours to sign the condolence book for Princess Diana and she wrote on it “It’s a shame you died just when you got your hair looking nice” which is fine, because the dead don’t really read the messages do they?

I believe that leaving messages like this does help the grieving process, and people feel they got to say something after a death that they couldn’t express elsewhere, I am just aghast at the spelling and language used on today’s networking sites by teens who have invented their own lingo.

Does that make me insensitive? I don’t mean to be, I hope the kids involved in those two deaths find peace as do the families surrounding the tragic girls.

Comments

She emerged recently looking paler, thinner and was slightly alarmed that the world had still turned despite her having nothing to do with it for three weeks.

Ashley got up this morning and asked her dad if he could go get her a ‘Fat Toosh’ he thought it sounded sexual and hid behind the toilet door till she stopped speaking, turns out a fat toosh is actually a ‘fatoush’ which is toasted Lebanese bread with salad, the local take away had shoved a brochure through our letterbox. She also got Ian Rankin’s new graphic novel shoved through the letter box, she was excited and even danced a wee bit.

I on the other hand have been suffering some deep self loathing; I need to lose weight and its not happening fast enough. The non smoking is going great, but my will power falls flat when it comes to stopping eating fatty food. So my weekend at Jongleurs Bristol was dominated with cottage cheese and cold meat, as that was all I would allow myself to eat. Low calorie and minimum carbs was the call of the day.

I have realised that I am the same weight that I was the day I gave birth to Ashley! So I am now walking about carrying that big lump of weight around my body, I could hardly walk when I was fully pregnant with Ashley and now that’s the body fat I live with. I hate myself now.

The good news is I have lost half a stone since I started really hating myself. Maybe I will really hate myself enough to lose another three stones and then I will look slim but full of deep tortured self deprecating low self esteem and develop borderline suicidal tendencies. But fuck it, I will look good eh?

Husband is ill prepared for this recent mood swing and has been staring at me in the dark in bed whispering “Are you ok Janey?”
“Why do you think I am fat? Can you feel the bed dip at my end?” I snipped at him.

“I am scared” his voice was like a thin shadow veiled with fear.
“I am fine, when I get thinner I will be finer” I shouted and broke the hush.
Bless his wee soul, he thought it would cheer me up if he got up at 5am and danced and sang a song at the side of the bed…naked. He didn’t know it made me want to take a toffee hammer to his eye. Sometimes I don’t think he knows me at all.

I think I may be going through a mental mid life crisis.

Comments

He admitted having sex with a minor. He drugged, sodomised and raped a 13 year old girl, but hang on, don’t forget the man is an auteur, he won an Oscar for fuck sake, Woody Allen is crying for his release – we cant possibly jail this man, he knows Harvey Weinstein and Harvey is going to speak to Schwarzenegger to get these insidious charges dropped. Its just a load of rich famous people excusing child rape, even women’s rights campaigner Whoopi Goldberg said “ it wasn’t rape-rape” really? There is such a thing as rape-rape? I never saw that kind of rape in the film the Colour Purple did you?

Speaking as a woman who was raped as a child, I am aghast at the attitude of people who can excuse this behaviour. The man who raped me told people I was promiscuous and coerced him into it; I was five years old at the time. His defence in court was that I was often seeking his attention, my uncle got three years in prison and people screamed ‘Rapist’ at him, but then he was a lazy, wife beating, debt ridden ex Orange Walk flautist and not a Hollywood pal of Tilda Swinton, David Lynch and Martin Scorsese. If only my Uncle Rapey had friends in high places, the attitude towards his child abuse would have been different. (The abuse continued into my teens- I was 13 years old when it stopped, which was just the prime age for Polanski)
I read an astounding article by Michael Deacon in The Telegraph newspaper in which Deacon said “I reread an extraordinary interview Polanski gave to the novelist Martin Amis in 1979, the year after Polanski went on the run.
The interview originally appeared in Tatler and is collected in Amis’s excellent book Visiting Mrs Nabokov.
Here’s a section of the first quote it contains from Polanski.
“If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!”

It doesn’t astound me that Polanski would say this kind of thing in public; it just amazes me that people view that kind of behaviour as acceptable if the person in the frame is famous!
We just need to look at the Michael Jackson debacle to know the veil of stupidity people drag over their morals when a ‘hero’ is involved.
Friends of Polanski have screamed out in his favour that his family were murdered in the Holocaust and his wife was killed in a horrific attack, so he should be left alone now!

That is a terrible insult to the families who died at the hands of the Nazi’s, and a slur to men whose wives were murdered, to suggest child rape is part of the recovery from such atrocities is just plain daft, and don’t get me started on ‘it was years ago, lets forget it’ as we all know that’s just begging the comment- so was the Polish Ghetto’s but you didn’t forget those did you Mr Polanski, and quite rightly so. Traumatic events do not fade with age and neither does their legalities.

Roman Polanski needs to serve the sentence he deserves. Apparently he is married with two young children; well let’s hope they grow up safe from the predatory eyes of a sexual beast who likes his victims ‘young’.

So now I have gotten that out of my system, I want to talk about Nick Cave. I didn’t really know who he was, but my niece Ann is dotty about him. We knew he was appearing at Borders Bookstore in Glasgow, so Ann and I headed off to the Rogano restaurant for our usual outside table for Oysters and tea. I love the Rogano, husband and I celebrated our 29th wedding anniversary there and the place is just lovely. Anyway we sat outside, she smoked and I bit my finger nails and made yukky noises as she slurped on oysters (I really can’t do food that you can’t chew) anyway, we hatched a plan to see Mr Cave.

We both ignored the long queue of people who had official tickets (we had none) and we barged past security (We had determined looks on our faces) and we stood near the table that Nick Cave was signing books.
He is a slight wee man with terribly odd dyed black hair.

“God, why are they playing whale death music over the crowd Ann?” I hissed. Of course that was Mr Cave’s music; I was too stupid to know that. It sounded like the tapes you get free to help with child birth.
The security man came over and said “if you don’t have a ticket or his latest book with a receipt then you don’t talk or approach or get anything signed”

Mr Cave is very snooty about these things and what with the whale music and his tiny peanut head dyed very black I wondered why people liked him. Apparently he nearly drowned Kylie, so he can’t be all bad eh?

Ann got all hot and excited and stared at him longingly as I chatted to an extremely agitated autistic man in his 30s.

Yes, I met an autistic man who was trying hard to find out where the blonde girl assistant who was ‘stood there, right there with her arm like this’ had gone to. He staged the scene for me by being ‘him’ and then ‘her’ and how she stood and how she looked. Then he blurted out “My jacket melts in the heat and it this isn’t yellow its citrus colour” as he pointed to a yellow bit of his flammable top.

He was getting agitated and the crowd who had come to see Mr Cave started staring at him. “What is it you need to know?” I asked him.

He rocked back and forth a bit and stared at me wide eyed, I didn’t look away. “I need to know where I can get a magazine called Shortlist; this book has pictures of it”
He thrust the book into my face and there were photographs of a magazine called Shortlist, I recognised it. “You get them free in airports”

The man nodded and wrote down ‘airports’ in a book and then slapped his two hands over his ears and shouted “this music is making me sad inside”. I could only nod in agreement.

He then spotted a Borders assistant and ran after him in a sideways run with arms flapping, scaring the Mr Cave fans, who hadn’t seen a man in flammable fabric run sideways in their lives possibly. I giggled and Ann said quietly “Why do you always find Aspergers or Autistic people no matter where we go and why he is running about mad?”

I shrugged and quite liked the odd man in the bright jacket and was sad to see him go; he was infinitely more interesting and accessible than Mr Cave.

Ann and I decided to leave; we headed back to Rogano and watched the local Big Issue seller get photo shoot after he had had a make over and new suit. He was dressed like a proper toff and given a lobster dinner to celebrate a birthday of the Big Issue campaign. The bloke sits outside the Rogano for years and is well loved; he looked amazing in his suit and his shiny shoes. It made me gulp back tears as he stood there drinking champagne, but somehow underneath it all, I felt he was being patronised and said so to the photographer.
“Well, he got a new suit and some good food” he snapped.

He doesn’t need a new suit and the chance to drink booze with the people he normally begs off, he needs a home and it’s appalling to know he had been homeless for 18 years and got a suit for good behaviour outside the Rogano.
I suddenly felt odd and wanted to leave, there was a sad feeling inside me when the homeless guy was walking about suited and booted, he looked happy but discontent at the same time. I couldn’t quite process what I was feeling and kept thinking things like- how can he beg in a suit?
Where will he keep it when he sleeps on the street? Will it be harder to lose it now or was it easier for him not to have the nice clothes in the first place? I didn’t know the answers and no matter which way I formulated them in my head it all felt wrong.

So, to top the day off Frankie Boyle came into the Rogano and we had a wee chat, he is looking a bit better after being unwell lately.

Ashley is getting better and wants to thank everyone for sending her love.

Comments

Scotland’s domestic abuse statistics rise by 80% after a Rangers and Celtic football match was reported by assistant Chief Constable Neilson of Strathclyde Police. During an Old Firm match serious and violent crimes can double.

After one football game back in February this year, police were called out to 185 incidents of domestic abuse- a jump of 52% compared to weekends when a match is not being played.

Assistant Chief Constable John Neilson said the force arrested more than 550 people on the day of the match - all of whom were drunk.

Officers also had to contend with a rise in the number of attempted murders, assaults, and breaches of the peace.

And such incidents have peaked during the past Old Firm showdowns during this year.
Now with the league match next Sunday at Ibrox the bigoted wife beaters need to feel the might of the football clubs. Punching the wife is a serious as punching a fan, yet a violent thug will only be refused entry to a match for fan bashing, and wife beaters will still get welcomed into the terraces. This needs to be addressed. Men who beat their partners and have been prosecuted should never be allowed into a football ground for life.
The clubs should be highlighting this situation, it can’t all be blamed on alcohol and if the clubs are seen to be doing something, it can only help.

Sectarianism has been being tackled with some success.
But thugs have basically swapped one form of abuse for another and yet again women get the brunt of their pent up frustrations.

These cowardly thugs, are restricted from bottling other football fans who wear a different coloured scarf on the streets by the police have now found an outlet for their drunken spitting hatred. They can now do their beating in private.

It is shocking to realise that women and children recognise that when their father’s favourite team gets beat, then so will they.
There has to be some sort of solution to this issue.

Police have warned pub and club owners to reinforce their responsibility towards customers and to make sure that drunks will not be served.

Booze is not always the cause for post match wife beating, it’s not as prevalent with other Scottish premier league clubs, it is mainly connected with Rangers and Celtic fans, and so that rules alcohol out as the sole instigator in this issue.

There is something that runs deeper with the psyche of the Old Firm fans, why do they become so vehemently angry? What makes an Old Firm football attendee kick his wife in the head when his team gets beaten?

Someone somewhere needs to come up with an answer and my opinion still sways towards football managers and committees to come out and talk about Old Firm violence.
Sectarianism isn’t Scotland’s dirty secret- Old Firm Wife Beating is.

Please support this campaign on Twitter, do all you can to highlight this issue. Thanks Janey Godley

Comments

It turns out Ashley may or may not have Swine flu…I think she has a viral infection but then am the woman who drowns fish so what the hell do I know? She has been told to drink plenty fluids and get bed rest and this she is really good at doing, so that’s a relief, though she is really sick, I am being sarcastic and I do worry.

She gets really hot then shivery and cold then I get bored listening to it and hide in my room. When she was a tiny baby and used to vomit all down my back when I picked her up I felt like squashing her wee cheeks hard, though I never did that- I merely wiped up the vomit and hugged her till she felt better. But I thought it would be honest to admit that sometimes your kids can make you insane. People underestimate the power of sleep deprivation, it is used a torture technique during interrogation and yet babies can induce sleep deprivation and people – usually mums suffer it in silence. I am not saying I am about to snap, am just saying it can happen.

Luckily Ashley was a sleepy baby, but once or twice when she did scream in her cot at 4am and I had a 17 hour shift in the pub to get up to, it was horrendously annoying. She wasn’t wet or hungry- she was just determined to get me to lift her up and I showed my mothering skills off by ignoring her and sleeping through the throat wrenching screams. She never really did make it a habit. I have little patience for that kind of behaviour.

The same goes with my patience for husbands Aspergers, I no longer care about his deeply inconvenient syndrome, he has been a tad screamy and insanely picky the past month as he is going through his Aspergic episode – a pillow to his face might happen soon as well. Did I tell you all I have stopped smoking? I am loving it and feel I may have passed the worst of it now…but I think I am slightly short tempered.

So I woke up today to discover that all the electricity in the surrounding area has been cut off. It was like the power strikes of the 70s, I walked about the house trying switches, as if some magical power had stayed in one wall and would give me light! I called people, I moaned, I worried about my frozen foods and I huddled under the covers with Ashley and told her about the dark days when I was a kid and our electric got cut off, how we sat with candles, how we walked about with blankets to keep us warm, she got bored and fell asleep. I woke her to continue the story, she was ill, what else did she have to do but listen? The bitch…anyway she got a fever again and I got heat off her back. So sometimes a viral infection can be good.

I am off to London this week for a bunch of meetings and a few other things and then off to see Monica and Elaine my buddy’s. I am doing a one woman show at The Platform in Easterhouse on November 14th.

You can call BOX OFFICE 0141 276 9696

Comments

Anyway this woman screamed at the cat, her voice reached whistle range and the cat merely licked a paw and wiped its face. Ok, the woman was wearing a Bhurka, and she was scared of cats, I never explained the full story, I omitted she was a Muslim lady in devout looking dress and was terrified of the cat. A man came running out of the Mosque across the street from me and he screamed at the cat as well, the cat licked its other paw and wiped its ears. The man was also scared of the cat. He paced round it, tried throwing stones at it and then finally flicked it with his foot; they needed the cat to move away from the woman’s front door. I was annoyed at the cruel way they were treating the fat tufty cat, so I walked over and lifted it up and placed it in the garden opposite her door.

This leads me to wonder if people with Asian/Muslim origin don’t like/hate cats and if they do, then we are missing a huge opportunity in the war against terror don’t you think? Maybe that’s why the Muslim fundamentalists wanted to blow up the bar Tiger Tiger in London, it wasn’t the ‘loose Western Women’ they were after but anything that represented big cats!

Maybe we should be allowed to carry cats onto planes and if another terrorist hijacking situation comes into play we just throw cats at them?

Anyway that’s how my brain is working as I stop smoking and try to stop eating. I have HEAPS of work and auditions/meetings etc…and I need to focus and stop getting involved in cat/Muslim situations and get my head into work.

I am off to see The House of Barnarda Alba at Citizens Theatre this Thursday to see the show. I wrote the foreword for the programme and am excited that Siobhan Redmond who plays the lead character cited my autobiography Handstands in the Dark as an influence on her playing a woman in a gangster family.

Lastly I am excited about Susan Boyle’s new song Wild Horses, which is awesome, though the press in the US citing her as the world most famous Catholic, made me giggle, surely that would be the Pope? Not Jesus as some people originally believed to be the most famous Catholic, as we all know he is the worlds most famous Jew. I still find it funny that Catholics pray to a dead Jewish man ….ok…don’t get all stroppy and start sending me hate mail.

Ok, on that odd note I am off to not smoke…speak soon.

Comments

I now have a ‘shopping bag’ which I take to the shops and put my food in to bring home. I recall years ago that my mum used to have a special shopping bag, like all Glasgow mammies had. It was brown, plastic, deep and smelled of potatoes and tobacco with an occasional Embassy fag coupon floating about the bottom of it. Your mammy made you carry it to the shops with a list of stuff to get and then you had to lug it back home again, feeling the handles strain against the weight.

My daughter was aghast to hear that us kids -back in the 60s had to go to the shops and carry a wee bag of coal and some sticks on our shoulders all the way back to our home!
I recall the day when I was considered ‘big’ enough to get the coal from Joe Lafferty’s in Shettleston Rd. He had those big tin posters of Cherry Blossom shoe polish, with wee kittens sitting in shiny boots right beside the coal stack. He helped balance the bag full of coal on my shoulder and watched me walk precariously out the door, all proud to be old enough to carry coal!

The chopped fire sticks would dangle on a string beside your legs and give you skelfs (splinters) as it bounced off your thighs and later you would have to dig them out of your skin with a hot sterilised needle! Shopping was different back then!

We used to wait the queue in Curley’s which was a big grocer shop; they sold all the cold meats, butter, cheese, cans and household cleaners. The floor was covered in black and white tiles and the staff wore white aprons then you had to go queue at the local butchers to get the butcher meat.

So we are back to the days of proper shopping bags, and that’s a good thing in my eyes! I am hoping shopping trolleys make a come back as well, as I have a tartan one in the cupboard.

Ok, some news about Glasgow -seems John Friel, an old gangster died last week. I recall him from 1979 when he parked his jaguar car outside my (soon to be) father in law’s bar in Shettleston; he managed to clip my leg as he backed up. I didn’t know (nor care) who he was, all I saw was a tall balding man wearing a beige camel coat getting out of the car and ignoring the fact he just hurt me. I ran towards him and lifted one big blue Kicker clad foot and kicked him squarely on his spine; his beige coat had a big muddy footprint on it.

“What the fuck?” he shouted twisting his coat round to look at the stain.

My prospective father in law laughed loudly and nodded at Mr Friel “that’s my son’s girlfriend”

“She needs to stop kicking people” Friel snapped.

“She probably wont” My boyfriend’s dad laughed again and the incident was over as quick as it started.

We did meet up years later and he was always absolutely courteous and lovely to me, though once he told me to get out of a nightclub I was in as he was annoyed that the women I was socialising with worked as prostitutes and he knew them.

“You should be at home with your husband and not out here with these working girls” he snapped at me. This was in the dark days of 1980s East End Glasgow, women back then weren’t allowed to vote, speak loudly or read at that time, unless accompanied by a female tutor or virgin/spinster companion.

Me and John Friel argued for about half an hour until he conceded defeat and accepted that I was allowed to socialise with anyone I wanted, especially after I threatened to penalty kick his spine again!

I recently read that he was involved in some spy ring, the IRA and a host of underground activities; I always thought he had kind eyes and a nice smile. RIP Mr Friel…may my footprint for ever be on your coat!

Comments

So last week I had some very interesting meetings and am very happy with the outcomes of them. Tide is turning in my direction for a wee change! It’s all swings and roundabouts as we all know but am enjoying the new stuff I am working on and Edinburgh provided great breaks for me, though I remain unconvinced that it was their -‘BEST SELLING EVER FRINGE’.

The sheer amount of act selling 2 for 1s right up until last weekend was frightening, and even some of the comedy award nominees never sold out on their last Saturday, that’s shocking!
People need to remember that 2 for 1s and free tickets given away COUNT as sold tickets in the final round up countdown, so it is misleading.
The last two weeks of the Fringe were very quiet and I witnessed some big promoters pull shows near the last weekend, I saw TV named comics struggle getting a sold out on that board and I know heaps of poor comedy bastards that will loose serious cash this year, fucking shame all round, especially when the venue and promoters get their cash off you upfront and NO MATTER HOW BADLY your show sold…I am glad I did it all myself and don’t leave Edinburgh Fringe owing anyone cash. In fact I did make a good profit this year, and am glad I took the risk again, especially with the TV and radio work I got out of it.

Onwards and upwards is the name of my game! I am off the fags and working like a wee Scottish devil, that’s what life is all about.

I went back to The Calton where I used to live in Glasgow’s East End with Michael Portillo (I know -how odd?) to take part in a documentary about the area. I sat outside my old pub and stared at the old red bricked building above it that was my home for 15 years, it was where Ashley grew up and where I started out in married life. It was rather emotional especially when you consider how we left it in 1994.

It looks really bad, despite being renovated. There is so much filth and clutter round the side of the building and the brick work looks dull, the windows look filthy, there are parts of the balustrade up on the roof missing and the pub itself looks like it was transported back to 1975 in a pub time machine. And I don’t mean the good part of 1975, I mean the awful drunken fucked upness of 1975.

There were a whole collection of drunken people all dressed in stone washed double denim, all who looked like some evil familial DNA had robbed them of the possibility of a chin since time began. Seriously no one there had a chin, the chubby faces all dissolved into their necks with out the interruption of a chin type facial structure to halt the journey southwards. I even stared into my make up mirror in my bag, to check I do have chin, turns out I have three chins, but that’s fine, the evil chin monster hasn’t stolen it the way he did to these poor people. He even took their teeth as well, people in the Calton outside that pub, lacked teeth and chins….that’s fucked up.

I don’t recall swathes of customers without chins or teeth back in my day!

A black youth walked past me and as he headed across London road I heard a chinless denim clad man shout “there’s Bobo the darkie” and other deformed faced denim clad men giggled. I clenched my teeth and stared at the ground. I hated the cunt faced man and hated that this was where my child grew up and hated that old men were actually not old really and smelled of beer and piss and I come from those people. I hated everything, I tried to remember good times in the Calton.

So I sat on the red fencing pipe opposite the bar and reminisced about Ashley learning to walk on that pavement, just as my golden glow of memories were over taking my brain, a car drew up, the man rolled the window down and he asked “You looking for business?”
I forgot about the kerb crawling bastards who surf the Calton looking for hookers, this man didn’t have a chin either, that disturbed me more.

“Fuck off chinless weirdo” I shouted at him as I waited on the camera crew arriving. He actually spat at me and drove off; to think I had glowy memories of this fucking street, what was I thinking of?

A wee drunken man from my old bar came wandering across to ask me inane questions that I can bear to write down or repeat as the dullness of the conversation was only saved by the fact he didn’t have a chin and I got to look close up at the chinless facial structure of this creature. It was amazing and really worth staring at.

Then Michael Portillo and the crew turned up and we all got microphones clipped on and started the shoot. The chinless man in double denim came out of the bar and walked purposely very close to the camera and shouted loudly “Don’t put me on camera, I don’t want on camera”

“Fuck off out of the shot, go back into the bar and don’t come fucking near a camera is the way to cure your worry about being caught on camera isn’t it you chinless fuck?” I shouted back coz I used to live there and I recall that’s how people spoke to each other.

Michael Portillo merely stared at me and then carried on regardless as though nothing had happened. I think politicians are good at pretending shit hasn’t happened and can smile through any storm, and he must know that as he was a Tory when Scottish people hated Tories and were allowed to cull them legally in honour of stolen milk and miners or something like that, I can’t totally remember!

The day brightened up, we finished the shoot and wandered home. All my glowy memories of the Calton were shot to fuck, people were nuts, double denim is SO HUGE in the Calton and I don’t want to go back there, all the good people are dead and the useless chinless cunts are left behind.

Comments

I model myself on the youthful appearance of Demi Moore, except if you minus all the surgery she has had and the Botox and skin plumper’s. I look how she would look if she had a fatty evil Scottish food and hundreds of fags pushed into her lungs and a series of childhood infections based on poverty and poor diet, if you take that into account Demi and I are practically identical.

Except my daughter doesn’t have an insurmountably large jaw line and a penchant for hanging her arse out of jeans, so what I am saying is, me and Demi Moore have fuck all in common but I wished I had the cash and balls to have extensive surgery to look beautiful, I cant even bear to get a filling in my tooth far less synthetic plastic pumped into my lip line! Ashton Kutcher is seriously hot though, I bet Demi makes him do things to her and he is scared in case she shaves her head again and starts beating him with pottery wheels or whips?

Anyway I have stopped smoking again. This is possibly the ninth attempt. Who knows? I am determined to go at least six months before I become an addict again. Give my wee lungs time to heal a bit.

Life is ok at the moment; husband and daughter are ignoring my rather snappy, biscuit eating, ear picking, and ranty, bitey moods as I detach myself from nicotine.

I am having a week off before I start comedy gigging, though am doing some filming for a documentary in the Calton next week. Then am back on planes, trains etc, I am in London soon for an audition and a few post- Edinburgh meetings. I am going to be calm and nice about things as my body detoxifies.

Am walking more and that’s good for me, had a few celebs on twitter show me some non smoking support, am determined to get fit, lose weight and stop smoking before the year is out. My daughter Ashley is on a health kick as well, she is eating better and exercising and that just encourages me to keep it up as well.

Just discovered a nice noodle bar up The Great Western Rd called WU-DON and the food is so yummy, I love thick noodles and Dim Sum, so I treated myself to some nice fare and walked home in the drizzling rain, picking up some charity shop books on the way. I do love buying novels in charity shops, the best way to buy a book as far as I am concerned.

Am off to sponsor Eddie Izzard on his marathon runs, you can keep up with him on Twitter and see pics and updates of his epic running journey, such a worthwhile charity, so go help please?

Comments

“Jim, you have 3 guitars, two tambourines and possibly a cello and you can’t play any of them, maybe its time to stop buying musical instruments” I replied.

“Do you like Kings of Leon?” he ignored my advice and carried on about music.

“Yes, I love them Jim” I said.

“Me too, I might try and go see them, are they Mormons?” he asked.

“Not sure, but I know the Osmond’s are Mormons if you are looking for a religious type musical group” I replied.

“Do you remember that time I toured with U2 and showed Bono how to wear a hat?” he asked.

“No, I don’t recall that but am sure it was fun” I giggled.

My brother Jim is basically nuts and makes me laugh and snort tea through my nose. I miss him and his insane ways, he used to have a dog called Cooper who tried to rape your legs every single visit to his home. Cooper also loved to try to bite the Hickman line that was attached to Jim’s chest during his chemo regime, the dog thought the red stud on my brother’s torso was a clothes peg and Cooper loved biting clothes pegs. It was a rather disconcerting time every time my brother stripped off his jumper in front of his crazy dog. Yet he survived, as always.

Much like me, we are survivors of all things medical is my odd family. My other brother is currently housebound as he jumped off scaffolding due a steel bar coming at his head and has now got two broken ankles. My elder sister has a plethora of complaints health wise but seems to be hanging on, I forget what is currently ailing her, but try hard not to think of her as an episode of House on the telly. She is a medical mystery.

I don’t have anything medically wrong with me actually, I do get things go wrong when am on tour, I write them down and promise to give it to the doctor when I get home, but by that time the symptoms have gone and I forget what it was that was wrong with me. I will probably die soon, due to a long ignored brain tumour which I mistake for a headache; I am given to deep paranoia about my headaches. Occasionally I get an upset tummy or really sore heels when I wake up, but that called ‘getting old’ and nothing to be scared about. My knees make a noise when I go downstairs; I suspect am in for Arthritis.

Other than that am all set to get back on the road again and flying off next week to Barcelona, then around the UK at weekends to do comedy stuff.

Am glad to be home at the moment though, Edinburgh was fun but can be tiring; I also did the New Zealand comedy festival this year, so it’s all been hectic and living out of suitcases. It’s lovely to pee in my own toilet.

Am also writing stuff for radio and I love doing that, it excites me no end, and I am glued to my laptop like a keyboard junkie.

Went up to see my dad yesterday and it was great fun to have a natter with him. He really is an inspiration, despite being widowed this year, he is perky, cheery and trying hard not to fall asleep on his sofa and lie awake all night. He has become nocturnal and can’t seem to shake it off, I told him to come up to my house during the night as Ashley stays awake during the night as well and they may all be vampires.

Had a nice laugh when I got home from Edinburgh as it turns out I was a clue in the Daily Record Quickie Crossword! It said 32 across ‘Comedian ----- Godley’ that made me smile and on this coming Sunday I am on the repeat of Just a Minute on BBC radio 4 if you are interested.

So back to reality and life, it is time to be me again, I suspect!

Comments

After my publicity stunt at the McTaggart Lecture, I got heaps of telly people come see me. I stood outside the lecture hall and said “I might have the idea that saves your career” folk gawped at me then I whispered “There are secret camera’s watching to see who takes the flyer” and even Murdoch took my one off me, everyone snatched them and took them into the McTaggart lecture for me. Only one bloke knew I was lying he sniggered “There are no camera’s are there?” I said “no” and he laughed out loud and took a bunch of flyers off me and took them into the hall. I liked that man; he is lovely and waited for me after my show came out for a chat! I didn’t know who he was, now I do. Edinburgh is good for that kind of thing.

This fringe has been harsh as well though.

The venue owners always say ‘Record breaking sales’ but they fail to tell you that 2 for 1s and free tickets are included in that count up, also there are more shows on, so the audiences were spread thinner across the board.

The first two weeks were great and these last two weeks have been pretty quiet for the majority of acts. People who have their PR/agent etc…with them this year will be scratching for a profit, its all swings and roundabouts. Without your manager/agent/pr you miss out on good press opportunities and will be missing the chances of some top TV people coming to your show. But it really shouldn’t be like that, why do comics need a manager to push the TV people their way? Isn’t it the TV scouts job to go find them? Do they need talked into it?

The Edinburgh Fringe has grown a huge industry of folk to ‘help’ your show become a success, none of them actually stand onstage and do the job but by fuck do they get their share of the profits!

The big hyped shows do sell well, but most of the cash (if not all of it) barely touches the hands of the performer, but then Edinburgh Fringe isn’t about what happens at The Fringe but what happens AFTER it, and that’s where the agents/pr/managers come into their own. I have always been naive, I always believed my shows would stand up for themselves and I wouldn’t have to line the pockets of swathes of folk to promote/publicise and manage me, surely it will always work out ok in the end and the talent is the thing that gets you work….but then I always believed in fairies as well!

In the Sunday Mail, there is an article about Scottish actress Siobhan Redmond, she explains about how she read my book Handstands in The Dark to help her prepare for the role as a gangster’s wife in her latest play The House of Barnarda Alba, you can read it here http://tinyurl.com/nm6xox
I also wrote the foreword for the Scottish National Theatre’s programme and the play opens at Citizens Theatre on September 15th in Glasgow.

The good news is all is well in Godley’s World, I will leave here with a happy heart and excitement and anticipation in my veins…I love The FRINGE and nothing can change that!

Comments

We are on the home run now people! Had some lovely people come to see my show, some Glasgow Celtic players (who I don’t know), Dean Freidman, Jimmy Carr and Roland Gift, his wife Louise and the actress Diane Quick, all lovely!
Though Jimmy Carr’s distinctive laugh had me giggling throughout my own show, it really is infectious! The crew from BBC Scotland’s comedy department came in as well and we all went off for drinks. They are awesome now that they are under the helm of a new head of comedy and it seems they like me…how unusual! Took an English woman to introduce them to me! Maybe one day I will make it onto the Fred McCauley show (he did keep promising, but it never materialised) never mind I was on BBC radio 4 this week with my Comic Fringes Short Story and I did a Just a Minute on BBC radio 4 as well!

I spoke to the previous producer of Fred’s show and he said “Maybe they couldn’t have you on because you swear” that made me giggle as I must be the ONLY comic to swear onstage in the world! I am truly unique indeed, but am glad BBC radio 4 don’t worry about such things, they must be really cutting edge is good old radio 4, especially as I have NEVER sworn on radio or telly in my life.

Have had such a good week numbers wise as well, I never succumbed to giving away free tickets or gave up 2 for 1’s either, people come to see me because I am a decent comic and NOT a bargain cheap away day ticket! I feel that it can demean the festival when big acts are giving away tickets this late in the run; it creates a cheapening of the entire spirit of the festival in my own opinion.

I would rather play to 60 full paying punters during the week than half full of uncommitted punters who don’t really invest in your show mentally; full payers also tend to value the show more as well.

The 2 for 1s and free tickets also discourages full payers coming in as they know some people in there got in for free and that annoys them, I know this coz I asked my audiences how they would feel knowing they booked in advance for a show at full price and then found out had they waited they could have got the tickets 2 for 1 and they agreed with me that it was insulting to them! I think am right which what I always think when I am having conversations with myself!
Have some great radio and TV work in the future as well, which made me happy, the Fringe isn’t about what happens in Edinburgh but what happens AFTER it all and therefore this one has been a huge success. I got more FIVE star reviews this year than ever! Though I might be wrong as 2004 garnered a huge swathe for Good Godley as well, am too tired to go check my website! That’s the other great thing about talking to yourself; you are under NO conditions to correct yourself!

Well technically I am talking to you lovely people but because I am quite tired it feels like am talking to myself and you inadvertently get to listen in! But I like that as well.

It was my husband’s birthday during the week and we never got to share it. I did call him up and remind him how I recalled every detail of his 17th birthday back in 1979 and how we shared that, I recall that I made him spaghetti Bolognese and we ate it on our knees in my grandfathers back bedroom. Then we went straight to work in his dad’s pub. Was that really 30 years ago? Did we ever think that 30 years later I would be performing comedy and he would be celebrating his birthday alone as I stood onstage making people laugh? I don’t think we could have ever foreseen that!

Life is good; I have stopped being sick and made new friends!

I am MC at the Malcolm Hardee award show on Friday night, the man behind it all is John Fleming who sponsors the show, and he was a good mate of Mr Hardee. Come see my show at Pleasance Dome 7pm every night till Monday 31st August, no free tickets but you get to see a five star show!

Comments

My illness started on Friday night, I did my show, it was great fun, Monica clapped loudly, Dean Friedman (my lovely friend and musical hero) laughed loudly and we headed out of the venue. Monica and I walked up to the Gilded Balloon loft, I had some tea, Monica had a gin and immediately I got horrendous cramps in my lower abdomen. “Ok, maybe I need a poo” I said to Monica and headed for the toilet, the cramps continued, I broke out in a hot sweat and I decided it was time to go home. Poor Monica was on holiday and I just cut the night short by organising diarrhoea and stomach cramps.

When we got back to the flat at around 9pm as we are total rock and roll, I stripped half naked and headed for the loo. I sat there for ages expulsing everything from both ends whilst Monica mopped my brow.
I felt so guilty that this was her holiday and I was ruining her day with my personal colon problems.

I must have eaten something crap and my stomach rebelled. I really didn’t need that on a Saturday morning. I hardly slept a wink due to cramping and shitting my skeleton out, but I had to go do the Breast Cancer Pink comedy show.

When I walked out on stage I noticed that there were two wee kids sitting there, Jenny Éclair had been onstage and done some pretty adult material, swearing and rather sexual content. I can’t swear in front of kids, fair play to Jenny, she is a top compere and the other mostly female comics weren’t prepared to face toddlers, yet they still put on sterling show and made the gig shine like a perfect beacon, but believe it or not, I just can’t be ‘nasty’ in front of small kids.

So I held in my vomiting and got the wee girl up on a chair and the whole audience got to hear about her albeit very short life, she was 3 and ¾ and wanted to be a vet when she grew up.

I love entertaining kids and adults at the same time. I did six comedy for kids show in NZ and it was a huge success. So the audience had a lovely time with me playing up to the kids, I even got a nice email from the organisers thanking me for my patience with the babies, that made me very proud of myself.

I am a bit sick of being labelled a ‘vulgar’ ‘sweary’ comic when in fact when it comes to it, I can do a whole hour without any expletives at all and small kids don’t throw me off the mark.

So after that I went back to some expert shitting and some sleep before my own show at 7pm, which was just awesome fun. I managed to stay out late and not vomit or deface any Edinburgh toilets with my nasty colon.

Though I did manage to embarrass myself when I chatted to a man who I thought was an old pal of mine called Ashley, who wasn’t the bloke Ashley at all -but Stephen Merchant! I am such a knob, I don’t know who he is as I have never seen Extra’s or anything he is in, and I really don’t watch much telly. He was gracious and we giggled and I walked away still semi convinced he was my mate Ashley from London! Maybe all that vomiting had expelled some of my brains. Life is ok, I feel better, I got rave reviews, I got great houses and I am not longer squeezing yellow bile out of my throat.

The good news is I feel better, and due to the illness may have lost some weight there is always a positive side to Dysentery.

Comments

During the week, I recorded Just a Minute and Comic Fringes for BBC Radio 4, the comic fringes was a short story I had written and read out to a live audience. The short story is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 3.30pm on 25th August 2009. Hope you like it!

Life at the fringe is ticking along wonderfully, my twitter followers alert me to any press they notice and they send other twitterers updates about me, who needs PR? I love Twitter!

The show has been going great guns, I did a whole show without swearing which was nice, as everyone likes to point out how much I swear (but never mention the boys, because this is still 1953) So I proved I can be funny without being ‘cursy’. I was going to dress in a floral frock and bake, but I guess that’s been done to death.

I love the fringe -Though the stinking rainy weather in Edinburgh makes me want to blow up the castle and kill all the happy jugglers. The folk who stand still dressed as statues fill me with hatred and vile- my brother used to down methadone and he could stand staring at a dead fly for eight hours after his dosage, we didn’t call it art, we called it a ‘habit’.

But today the sun is shining and we all know tomorrow is set for a tsunami of epic proportions as the puddles overwhelm the punters in the street. Why can’t we have the Edinburgh fringe in Barcelona? That would be awesome. Why do we have it in a city where we need a canoe to get to the venue?

In my show I talk about being on a train when a man gets killed, and funnily enough my mate Monica is late getting into Edinburgh as a man died on the line during her journey today, she is like that, she copy cats everything I do. (Ok that was a rather heartless remark about a death, I am sorry but I have a headache today and feel somewhat nasty, forgive me).

Ashley is still in Amsterdam and husband is still at home in Glasgow, he is happy without the constant madness of the Fringe, I know how he feels when I hear loud comics projecting their voices saying “My sitcom in LA is awesome, the writers just cant believe my life when I explain stuff, seriously, I am so off the chart edgy, anyway one night I was with these models and they were so into me…blah blah”

It can make your cranium vomit blood…The best fun to be had is getting a reviewer to tell you what she has been to see, then hear the gossip about whose show is 30 minutes long and who is repeating old shows and who is boasting about sell outs when ten people are in the room, its evil but funny and am sure I will go to hell for giggling.

Life is mental in Edinburgh, I still haven’t drunk a drop of booze, as I am not really a drinker and keep planning a late lie in and getting scuppered as people keep asking me to do things early in the morning.
This week I am going to take it easy, life is good!

Comments

PR companies are good at getting reviews in for comics, they meet the reviewer for a drink, chat with them afterwards, explain parts of the show that deserve five stars in case the reviewer didn’t get it and then let the reviewer go as soon as they have secured a date for it going to press, preferably early on as it helps numbers.

Well, I don’t have PR and am relying on the reviewers coming to my show, not drinking my cash but enjoying what I do and then heading off without so much as a by your leave from me, but hopefully happy with my work!

My audiences have been just wonderful and the numbers have been great. Some people are still doming 2 for 1s and/or cancelling their show on the night due to low numbers. The fringe is screaming ‘best ticket sales ever’ but that includes all the free tickets printed and there are more shows across the board this year, so it does appear to be more ticket sales but there are just more shows!

I am lucky that despite practically no reviews and no pr I have a core audience that come to see me, I love chatting outside on the wee wall after my gig, come down for a natter!

I did an episode of Just a Minute and it really is funny and scary at the same time. Sue Perkins is a genius at the game as well as Paul Merton; I was just constantly repeating myself over and over again, as if repeating was the real object of the game.

Ashley and I are having good fun, I love having quality time and a good old nattering with her. Her love of all things geeky astounds me; she is obsessed with William Shatner, Podcasts about sci-fi and listens to some ancient station podcast about Sherlock Holmes which is constantly interrupted with adverts for tonic wine! Its proper old and makes me giggle when I hear Basil Rathbone’s plumy tones.

The late night gigs have been fun as well, Girls with Guns at Gilded Balloon are just awesome and if you have time in the afternoon go see King of Everything at GRV, just some recommends from me!

Edinburgh is cold but my best mate Monica is coming up from London and spending the weekend with me! Hurrah!
Am missing husband and Ashley is off to Amsterdam this week, so all things are go. Come see the show, if nothing else just to be astounded at my interpretation of a church name in Maryhill, Glasgow. It even makes me snort out of my nose.
Pleasance Dome 7pm every night till 31st August.

Comments

Ashley is SO OVER the fringe and spends her nights watching TV on her laptop and making tea for me. She has given up on hanging out with disenchanted malfunctioning comics, that was so exciting when she was 17 years old at 23 she thinks me and my fellow performers are fully functioning freaks. Though I am not one of those!

The palpable power of the reviewers makes me feel vomity, I am sick of reading that some of my fav comics are getting slated for either making loads of people laugh (but not the reviewer) or having a hot room that the reviewer feels the need to blame the comic for!

I still haven’t yet had a review printed though I did have some TV/radio people in and sealed a few deals and week two isn’t even over, so that’s good news and the reviewers cant stop that from happening nor can they MAKE that happen, that’s all down to my and my show. I love this year’s show more than I have in ages, it’s not about my childhood, my past, my family or anything sad, it’s all about strange things and funny incidents that occurred.

I haven’t seen any shows yet either, as my units of sleep would be disturbed if I started to do that stuff!
Had a great chat with Anthony who runs the Pleasance and he is such a good dude to hang out with, he did nothing but praise me up and make me feel welcome and lovely, what a nice bloke! He enjoys the fact that he and I always make cash at the fringe, and we share that common bond!

The other thing I love about my Edinburgh run is the sheer amount of regulars who come to see my year after year, that actually makes me cry a wee bit when I see folk make a huge effort to get to Edinburgh come see me and then go home! Many just come to see me! That is touching!

I am also having great fun with Ashley as I missed her terribly when she was in London and its good hanging out with her. I have had a few late nights up at the Gilded balloon loft bar and met loads of kind folk, nice people who aren’t creepy or too sycophantic. My mate Monica is coming up next weekend and I can’t wait to spend time with her, she is just a big fucking bag of love and fun for me. When we are in London she is always too busy as she owns her own PR Company and looks after famous chef’s like Heston Blumenthal and other giants of cooking, so we never get a minute to ourselves, now we can PARTY in Edinburgh.

We can eat burgers and giggle, that’s what we do…yes I know it sounds exciting doesn’t it? Well to us IT IS!

Had a laugh the other day when I jumped in a taxi to get to Nicholas Parsons show where I was a guest, the cab managed to mount the pavement and almost kill a man. That man was Steve Bennett from The Chortle website, he is a big reviewer and it made me laugh. When Steve jumped out of the way of the cab, I hung out the window and shouted “Next time Bennett!” I am sure he got a fright and that made me laugh yet again!

I am still well into Spotify though now that it is very popular the irritating adverts on it are getting more frequent and longer than ever, so I have developed new finger skills to automatically mute the sound when the incessant Paulo Nautini music advert comes on and especially when that awful Amy McDonald advert appears, am so glad my mute button is handy and I switch to ITunes library when the fucking long adverts kick in….that was tip for people like me who hate adverts! Just put your ITunes library on a new tab and switch!

So, things are going well my big giant 175 seater venue with aircon and disabled access and are selling well and that is good. The show is going great guns and do come and see me? Pleasance Dome 7pm (it’s just beside the big upside down cow) come say hi.

By the way if you feel like voting for your favourite comic go to this link register and do so! http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/447325

Comments

Everyone had a great first weekend, numbers were great and now we are onto the dip in the midweek section and you can see some comedians walking about looking glum. But it is just the midweek slump, especially if you are in a BIG room that gets filled up at weekends, it can leave you feeling odd. Chins up though!

I still haven’t had a review printed yet, though I have had reviewers in.

Watched some comedians who got slated by reviewers actually being dragged away from said reviewer in Pleasance Courtyard, now that was a frisson of gossip for you. Nothing happened, they just looked angry and shouty, but reviewer just sat there laughing his head off at them.

I had a woman in the Fringe Queue ask me if I swore in my act as she doesn’t like women swearing, I asked her if she asked the male comics that question and she said “I have never spoken to a comedian before” Fair enough, so I asked her had she seen any women comics at the fringe. “Yes, I have seen a few” she answered. “Did they swear?”

She went quiet for a moment and reluctantly replied “Yes, but they were very English and middle class, it wasn’t really swearing, they were making a point”

The people around her just gawped at her and I burst out laughing. Because basically what she is saying is that my working class Scottish accent makes swearing vulgar!

“Well if I swear onstage I will make sure I do my best Queen Elizabeth accent and pretend to have once ridden a pony if that helps” I replied.

The folk around her just kept laughing and she kept trying to justify her point of view that swearing is ok for a woman as long as it’s done tastefully and in a nice Home Counties accent.

Which brings me onto my next point, every time I see a female comic’s review- I notice that the reviewer spends precious sentences explaining how and in what manner the female comic swore? I have never seen this in male comic reviews and have realised that all these so called liberal journalists and folk who claim to be in the 21st century have a 1950s attitude towards woman using the same language as men onstage!

Life is strange at times. Ashley and I are having a good time together, we watched season two of Everwood on her laptop last night, it really is corny but made us giggle.

Comments

On Tuesday we moved through to Edinburgh, Ashley managed to bag the big double room with balcony and en suite bathroom, I don’t understand how she gets the best room and I am the performer! Anyway we managed to put together an amazing flyer team, they are just a great bunch of enthusiastic bunch and they are working their asses off. If you see one of my flyerers please tell them I love them! Ashley decided to buy a tartan Hurley trolley; you know the kind, the wee tartan shopping trolley! She puts all the flyers in it and heads off to replenish their stock.

My first night went great, I didn’t really have a show, I just put together a bunch of stories and hope for the best. It went good…people liked it!
It was also cool catching up with comics that I haven’t seen in a while.

The second day I took my friends wee boy to the park, he is such a delight to be around and really is well behaved. There were some annoying posh looking lanky teenagers (one was wearing a dinner jacket and jeans, with side combed emotional hair, he needed punched for that alone) on the roundabout and they were making it go extremely fast and scaring all the kids around them. It was such a hot day and the park was crowded, so I walked over and said to my wee charge “Shall I throw them off?”
He nodded and smiled, other wee kids watched and started to gather as they could smell adult trouble happening. A gaggle of chubby faced toddlers gathered around me, silently chanting me on with eager cheery faces, how could I let them down?

“Get off now” I screamed and pulled the roundabout to a stop and the wannabe crew of skinny jeaned fuck wits who looked like bad extras from Skins all stared at me and clambered off and skulked off the play ground. One big lanky boy with his jeans hanging off his ass waited till he was far enough away and gave me the finger and shouted “Bitch” I stared at him and a big daddy who had two kids near him stood up and booted his skinny bony ass. We all cheered and clapped, even the kids joined in. The skinny assed kids ran away and you could tell they were all about to become Emos or Goths but didn’t have the staying power to learn the shite music and show commitment to the dyed hair cause.
A few things bother me about the fringe and the big thing is – people who give away FREE TICKETS to shows. It means that people coming up to Pleasance Dome and are about to buy tickets then get swayed into taking a free ticket. I disagree with the FREE ticket scenario, people don’t value the show, they sit with other people who have paid and that’s not nice and it creates a culture of people expecting a FREE show. I don’t mind the Free Fringe etc…but in venues where the tickets do cost it really does antagonise me. A woman came up to my daughter and asked if my show was free and Ashley said “No” and the woman just said she would wait to get a free ticket.

Its called papering a room, I really believe that if you can’t play to 6 people then you should piss off, I played to small audiences and I earned my stripes. The thinking behind papering a room is- they believe people will walk away and then tell people to go buy tickets, or maybe the folk will walk away and think “Why buy tickets if you can get them for free?”

I take the free tickets and throw them away, as I believe it undermines everything me and other comics are doing. I know people disagree with me but I get pissed off with it, especially when they are still giving away free tickets into week 3, that’s just wrong.

Other than that I am having a great time, I have done two shows already and am getting prepared for my Just a Minute performance which always scared the bejebus out of me. Day three coming up, so do come and see me, it will costs you money but I am sure you will like it! (hopefully).

Comments

Ashley had fun in London and thanks to Sue she had a great place to stay. I adore Sue for looking after her, also my mates Angela and David who gave her heaps of support. Ashley had been helping out with some filming with Dodgy Dave Courtney and decided to back out of the last day, just as well as Dave got raided by the police and got put in prison. The last thing I needed was my daughter being caught up in a gun raid, again! The last time she was involved in a gun raid she was 8 years old and it was me and her dad, being dragged out in cuffs. She doesn’t need to go through that again.

So, it is good to have Ashley home, she is holed up in her room listening to some geeky Star Trek podcast. That’s what she does.

I have to get my hair done, I have to get a radio show done, I have to get packed and I have to make sure everything is sorted for my opening show on Wednesday. The house basically looks like Paddy’s Market, with heaps of clothes everywhere.

I love the opening week of The Fringe, I have about six opening parties to go to, and probably won’t make any of them. I have an acute ear infection AGAIN…and am convinced the big dull pain that sits on the side of my head is a big evil brain tumour waiting to burst and kill me! If I die like that you can all say “She knew that was going to happen” and then I will be right after all. (I like being right).

The show is all set to go and I am as happy as punch, and I love getting to see all the comics I know in one small city, then after about a week I get bored as hell and end up watching too much telly and being boring.

Looking forward to meeting some of you at the Fringe!

Comments

He also cannot abide the flood of drama students who ‘black up, dress as vampires/slaves/scary ghouls and walk about with a empty box, two fake trees and a mannequin that has stab wounds and be accosted by a crowd of overtly posh kids that scream the song Alfie in some pseudo retrospective about the state of sexuality in the 21st century’.

In fact he actively pushes them out of the way and hisses under his breath and says things loudly like “Art my balls”. Personally I enjoy seeing the drama students and their high jinkery, they don’t bother me at all, but husband can’t be arsed being shouted at and harassed as he tries to buy a steak pie in the local Edinburgh butchers, he isn’t ‘arty’ at all.

My daughter Ashley usually ends up barking at the over excited drama kids if they dare to interrupt her when she is flyering a prospective crowd of comedy goers. Woe betides any fuckwit drama student who gets in her face as she chats to her people!
My girl has been working and flyering at the Fringe since she was 8 years old and she knows her stuff and she has claimed her patch a long time ago! She’s a bit like a grumpy hooker “This corner is mine, now take your paper mache puppet and piss off”

I am not condoning this kind of behaviour but comics invest huge amounts of their own cash, we aren’t subsidised by a local art or drama fund, we need the audiences and what we don’t need is a bedraggled Oxbridge boy dressed as one of the Pre-Raphaelites shouting Shakespeare through a toilet roll tube into our ear. It just annoys us, is all am saying.

My husband has bought a new telly and he aint leaving it in Glasgow to sit in a fancy overpriced flat in Edinburgh and listening to me hark on about reviews and ticket sales. He might love me but he isn’t insane.

I am looking forward to this show I have planned more than I have about other shows in ages. I just like how it goes, I am not doing stuff about my past or my family really, it’s all about my travels and I have some cracking funny stories to tell…well I think they are funny and the previews went well. Even a well respected reviewer loved it and that makes me breathe out a wee bit!

But as always most of the stuff will be made up on the night as that’s what I always do for Edinburgh. I have never written stuff down and stuck to it, and audiences seem to enjoy that about my shows, it’s become my ‘thing’. Some people come and see the show twice and I love that they do, as it does change a bit as the show progresses. Comedy award people don’t really like that, it was one of the criticisms I got a few years ago when the famous Perrier award was on the go. The panel loved the show but they soon realised I wasn’t doing the exact same show night after night and that kinda went against me. I do what the audience like and not the comedy judges. Still I did manage to win some awards in Edinburgh like the Fringe Report and Funny Women Award last year, and pick up a Glasgow Herald Five Star review.

So, everything is almost in place, am waiting on Ashley getting back from her travels and looking forward to her coming to Edinburgh with me. She makes the festival happy for me and looks after me with a steely eye, heaps of affection and a big dose of daughterly love.

Hope to see you all there and if you want to buy tickets remember the first few days are cheaper and there are still some tickets left for those night so go get them before they disappear. http://www.pleasance.co.uk/edinburgh/listings/show/godley%27s_world/tickets

Comments

He shouted, and did that amazing thing with both hands cupped round his useless gob and hurled abuse when I spoke. The room stared at him. I gave him my usual 3 strikes and your out rule, then eventually pointed the magic finger and got him removed. What is it about a man who hears the words “Stop shouting or you will get thrown out” ignores the warning and carries on yelling shit? The audience HATED him and were shouting to me “Point the finger” after I explained that if he didn’t behave, I just need to point my finger and he’s gone!

After the show heaps of people from his table kept apologising to me, though it didn’t spoil the night.
Today I woke up and ate biscuits for breakfast coz am rock and roll. Husband and I are missing Ashley like hell and this morning at 4am she texted me and I called her and wee chatted till the sun came up over London and Glasgow simultaneously, she told me funny stories about meeting extremely posh English people and how all the girls said stuff like “I am just doing PR for daddies company till I get married!” Ashley said she was the only female amongst the party who had a career plan and possessed hips. The rest were incredibly skinny girls with bad skin and all their names ended with ‘A’ like Arrabella, Emma, and Sophia etc. She said they all wore pseudo socialist tee shirts and were saying things like “Can’t wait for Uncle David to become Prime Minister”

The boys were all called Ollie, Henry and Theo who had large bodies, big bushy heads of hair and giant genetically mutated round faces! She said they all had big chins like the cartoon American Dad! She said she had to run out of the party because her eyeball hurt from too much posh-ness in the room, the smell of cousins marrying each other was pungent!

She went from meeting gangsters one day to horse riding top hatted toffs the next! I miss my wee chicken.

Comments

Last week went to John Smeaton’s wedding to lovely Christy from New York; she really was a beautiful bride. The setting was amazing in an ancient castle near St. Andrews in Fife, which is called the Kingdom of Fife…though they didn’t have a King in residence. Just squillions of American golfers, wandering about in the pissing relentless rain, but it was lovely.

I was unsure what to wear to the wedding; I thought about setting fire to my hair and crashing my car into the front of the hotel…but decided against it. For those of you who didn’t get that reference, John Smeaton was the Glasgow Airport Hero during the terror attack on Glasgow airport in 07.

Anyway, Ashley is still in London and I am still missing her heaps, but she is good and happy. She is hanging out with Monica my best mate and unofficially Ashley’s auntie.

Husband and I love the new found freedom of the house. We eat cups of sugar puffs in our pants and have spontaneous snogging in random parts of the house (though not Ashley’s room as that’s a bit Michael Jackson, fucking in the kid’s room is just plain wrong).

Went through to Edinburgh and did a speech for the Domestic Abuse Conference, no, I didn’t tell them the best place to punch a woman it was all AGAINST domestic abuse for those with a comedy brain who read a joke into that sentence.

Am at Glasgow Jongleurs this weekend and looking forward to having fun in my own city.

Life is quiet before the storm of The Fringe, by the way you buy tickets here http://tinyurl.com/lumeda and the first few days of cheap tickets still has some spaces. Speak soon.

Comments

My man loves receipts more than anything else in the fucking world, as they represent cash spent and therefore represent less tax to pay when doing the accounts.

Now I don’t like that he called BT Vision, I preferred it when we were bent…hang on I have just noticed something, ‘bent and straight’ doesn’t always refer to the nasty euphemism of being gay – it also means being crooked and being law abiding!

Anyway I recall the old days when we were rather ‘bent’ and rarely did anything legal, now this new found ‘straightness’ annoys me.

I know the old days are over, but fucksake I still find it hard to pay full price for anything.
When we owned the bar in the Calton we had a rather ‘dubious’ lifestyle, but all that’s gone now, we are upstanding straight law abiding nice folk who might eventually get invited to bake cakes for the local Church. Ok that won’t happen; I have gone straight –not mental.

Husband is one of those men who when he is asked “Do you like my new top?” he immediately says “Did you get the receipt for that? Where is it?”

He then goes through all the receipts and shouts out every three seconds “Why did you buy another jumper, six quid for lipstick? Who pays 17 pounds for a hairbrush?”

This goes on for days during the sexy tax season, and by fuck it makes me want to drink bleach and die.
To add to my ‘I want to kill husband feeling’ this morning he came to bed at 5am (he was going through receipts) he disturbed me no end with his constant turning about, burrowing around and fucking really annoying fidgeting. He stuck his freezing cold hands down the back of my pyjama bottoms and wrapped an icy foot round my calves. “Ohhh you are warm” he said loudly, because clearly the fidgeting and frostbite wasn’t enough to wake me up.

But then I take everything back, coz I was supposed to go see my dad this morning but I was exhausted and husband got up at 9am, wrapped an eye mask around my head and went to see dad himself and he only got three hours sleep. So he is forgiven and I am technically a moany old bastard.

By the way I regularly post on Twitter if you want to follow my Twitter my user name is: http://twitter.com/JaneyGodley

Comments

“Where will I get two quid from?” Ma shouted back over the noise of the loo flushing.

Major lifted a black claw and scratched my leg, his brown eyes pleading with me.

“I am taking the dog out” I whined back and grabbed the thick metal dog leash off the door handle in the lobby and clipped Major’s collar, only to be dragged off at speed down all the stairs outside. I needed to think of a plan to get two pounds to buy a tartan Bay City Roller’s jumper; everyone at school had one except me.

Major stood out the back yard and peed for about ten minutes, whilst scanning the back court for pigeons or cats to attack the minute he was done pissing. He was always on the look out for a victim was Major. He was an angry dog.

“Hurry up Major, I need to figure out how to get two quid” I hissed at him.

Even my dog looked at me pitifully, he knew there was no chance of me getting that Bay City Roller jumper before the shops shut at 5pm. He finished his pee, scratched the ground with his back legs, flicking up pee soaked soil over my jeans and tried to pull off the leash to chase imaginary cats. I couldn’t let him free, he would bite the first living thing he spotted and I couldn’t bear to get into a dog dispute today.

Our back yards were a square set of twenty blocks of flats with open closes which led through to the front streets, all the individual closes had penned off back yards which were segregated by green painted railings. Major loved getting into other people’s yards.

I ran around the back letting him sniff bins, scratch at the ground and snuffle through the long grass near the railings. He looked up at me pleading to be let free, he wanted to run about but every time I let him go, he slipped his bony body through the metal railings and shot off on a bite fest and although I was wiry and fast, I couldn’t climb over those spiky fences and catch up with him, he was an expert escapist. Before I knew it he would be on the main road attacking pensioners and babies. He was mental and very scary looking.

“No, Major, you will run off and bite people” I answered as he stared at me.

He sat on the cold ground and lifted a paw at me and gave me his best cute look. So I let the leash snap off his neck. He started walking slowly around our confined fenced yard, and then he suddenly shot off and leaped over the first fence in a flash. “Oh God” I shouted and started after him. I climbed over three sets of metal railings as he slipped through or jumped over them and made off through the opened close of flats across the backyard. I saw his tail disappear through the close into the front street.

I panicked and kept climbing over the four foot high railings till I reached the close he had run through. I could hear screams from the front street, my heart was pounding. I was exhausted and sweating, why did I let him go?

On entering Vesalius Street, I saw one old woman pinned up against a front garden fence with Major barking at her feet. The dog spotted me and ran off in the direction of the big main road that ran through our wee scheme.

He slid past big lorries that trundled down the busy road; he sped through the traffic and made it to the opposite side of the road. It took me ages to let the traffic past before I could run across and chase after him. He barked and snarled at passers by. “Get that dog on a leash” a man shouted. The leash was wrapped around my hand as I panted and gasped my way up the road. His pointy tail was visible and the barking kept me on his track.

Finally he came to a stop. He watched me over his shoulder; he sat on the pavement quietly as I approached him stealthily. I fully expected him to bolt off again as I got closer, but he didn’t move. “Major, you bad dog” I shouted as I clipped the leash on him. He just stared at me and padded off quietly.

My clothes were sticking to me with the sweat of running and jumping so fast. He merely hung his tongue out and happily jaunted off as if he was the happiest dog in Shettleston. We got stuck at the main road, the traffic was heavy, buses were speeding past and I was nervous crossing that road, as I had been knocked down by a car two years previously near the spot where we stood. It had taken me almost a year to walk again, and at twelve, I still had a slight limp.

I heard a familiar voice shout “Janey” from one of the buses as it drove past. The bus stopped near me and loads of people spilled out of the back opening. There was my old favourite uncle John. “What are you doing out with that mad dog on the main road?” he asked.

“He ran away from me” I explained. Uncle John was my pal, he was a lot older than most of my uncles and had neither kids, nor a wife and was often ‘away’ though we were never told where. He never had a home of his own and usually stayed with family members, and I loved him. He was quirky and had funny ways of explaining stuff. I once asked him why he never fought in the Second World War and he told me “Well, you see with all the men away, the women of Shettleston needed someone to replace their light bulbs in their lobby’s and I didn’t have a fight with the Germans, they never personally upset me, so I don’t see why I should be a paid killer of someone else’s son”

Turns out my old Uncle John was a bit of a ‘Lad’ and traded guns with crooks and never fought with anyone unless he had a personal gripe with them.
He was occasionally in prison and never really settled with anyone anywhere.

“Look, here’s some money for you, now don’t tell your Ma that I have cash, say you found it” He said and pulled a TEN POUND note from his pocket. Ten pounds was a fortune to me at twelve. I stared at the note; I don’t think I had seen a ten pound note close up in my own hand. Major sat quietly and wagged his tail at Uncle John; he was about the only visitor to our house that Major didn’t bite.

“That’s a lot of money, thanks Uncle John but I can’t say I found it, are you sure you can give me this? I will need to say something” I stuttered at Uncle John.

“Well, learn to lie and hide it Janey” he laughed and walked off.

I stared at the money in my hand, it felt so…wonderful and rich, the texture of the paper had me stroking it constantly, the swirly writing and just the overwhelming fact that I had ten pounds to myself, made me feel giddy.

I immediately set off to the Co-op and dragged Major with me; I now had the dilemma of how to get into the shop with my dog. Major could not be tied up outside, he would bite folk.

The big glass door to the Co-op jangled as I entered. Major growled low in his throat, he hated new places. My dog was rather autistic and anal for a domesticated animal. Things set him off, like a door bell, a floor brush and he despised goldfish and fish tanks, he attacked them viciously, he tried to bite the glass fish bowl in my bedroom. He was mad.

“That dog can’t come in here” a woman with the pinched face behind the counter shouted.

“I have ten pounds” I shouted back and showed her my cash “I just want a white Bay City Roller tartan jumper for my size” I added and stood at the door.

She relented and I tied Major to the big pillar at the side of the counter, I begged him not to bite anyone or bark. The woman held out the acrylic top for me to see, I nodded and guessed it would fit me. She wrapped it up in brown paper, sellotaped the edges and held it to me. I tucked it under my arm, and carefully wrapped the change into a small bundle and bent down to tuck it into my sock. Major licked my face as I bent down. “Stop that Major, your breath stinks” I giggled.

I ran for home with my parcel, Major trotting beside me and all the while thinking up a good lie to tell my Ma about the jumper. She could smell a lie and money in seconds and possessed the ability to get the truth out of anyone; I was surprised that she wasn’t an interrogator for the government.

I spotted the butchers shop on the way and decided to treat Major to some scraps, as he really did get me the jumper I reckoned. Major was barred from the local butchers as he would run in and try to drag a side of beef off the butcher’s hooks and was known for his daring raids, so I tied him to the lamppost outside, he wouldn’t bite anyone as he could smell the meat and that occupied him.

“Can I have a soup bone and a wee bit of liver please?” I asked. The butcher checked the door for Major. “He is tied up Mr Cross” I explained “He is sorry about the dead cow he pulled down”

The Butcher smiled and wrapped up some liver and a big bloodied bone in greaseproof paper. “It’s ok, Janey, no charge for the scraps and keep that crazy dog back from my shop”

Major wolfed down the wee bits of liver and chomped down on the bone and we both marched home, happily. I realised that if Major had a bone in his mouth he would never bite anyone, so maybe we have to keep him supplied with bones forever?

Ma was never told about the jumper or the cash, she never saw what I wore to school and it eventually turned up in the washing bag. I had duped her!

The change from the ten pounds was stuffed up the disused chimney shaft in my bedroom and I managed to eke it out for months, buying myself sweets and a chicken supper at the local chippy, all of course eaten outside in the back court with Major at my side.

Comments

Ashley is living with a lovely woman called Sue; she owns an amazing house in Islington. So, I organised to meet her at Groucho club in Soho. Just as I arrived in Watford, Ashley called to say that the whole of Dean Street (where the Groucho is situated) was closed due to a big fire in Soho. Crap! So then we moved the meet up at Soho House which wasn’t closed even though it is also close to the fire!

I was really looking forward to being with her even though we had only been apart one whole day! Poor Ashley is missing her daddy! The man who annoys the fuck out her, the man who constantly irritates her yes that man, she is distraught without him.

Anyways I too am having strange reactions to my baby being away from home as everyone who knows me or reads my blog knows how much I adore my girl. She is such great fun for me and instead of putting loads of energy into developing her cultural life, I have spent my life giggling with her and using her as a great source of amusement as she is really funny to me. I will miss her as well. She was like a wee fun performing monkey child who always did funny things.

Anyway she came over to my mate’s house on Friday and we slept in the same room. Just as we were falling asleep we both clearly heard the sound of a rodent clicking about on the wooden floor. Ashley screamed and nearly shit herself, I just ignored it and told Ashley the mouse won’t climb up and go near her. Next morning there was tiny mouse shit on my pillow as it REALLY did climb up and go near me, the wee mouse cunt obviously decided I was a good sleeping partner. It probably pissed on my hair! What the fuck?

I flew home today and BA decided to move my pre-booked seat as they needed a WOMAN to sit beside two unaccompanied kids. I find that really sexist, I mean I could be Karen Mathews, Rose West or Myra Hindley or Ian Huntley’s creepy bird…why do people assume women are better than men when placed near strange and vulnerable kids?
I was once charged with possessing guns and explosives, and if psychologists are to be believed am also a potential child abuser as I was abused as a kid….why sit me close to kids and not a man?
Anyway I never said any of that aloud, I sat down and pointedly ignored the kids, because the only time I had was for MY CHILD and she wasn’t with me. She is in London being a big adult with a grown up proper life, managing well…without me!

My gig at Edinburgh comedy club The Stand got a review in The Scotsman newspaper, the other female comics were awesome, I loved the show. The critic twittered me and said “@JaneyGodley genuinely one of the best sets I've seen you do. You'd have got 4, nudging 5 stars but I've given the gig overall 3”.

So that means my Edinburgh Show is looking promising all round, am happy people but I miss my girl.

Comments