When Janey Godley thinks of Dundee, she thinks of hamsters – and one unforgettable hangover.
“My first memory in Dundee is of staying in a comedian’s house one night in 1995 after I’d done a gig,” recalls comedian Janey, whose Nicola Sturgeon voiceovers became a viral sensation during the Covid lockdowns.
“I was sleeping on the sofa, as you do when you’re a new comedian. And his child had hamsters. The whole night they climbed up the side of the cage – ting, ting, ting – then fell down. Over and over, the whole night.”
Many years after that initial gig, she returned to Dundee and earned a hangover for the ages.
“I remember doing a gig in Dundee about 10 years ago,” the 63-year-old giggles.
“My pal Elaine came with me, and Elaine doesn’t really drink. I’m not a big drinker either. But for some reason after the show, we went to this fancy bar and drank cocktails.
“They were really drinky. And we were really drunky!
“And I just remember waking up thinking: ‘Ugh, I’m going to die’. That must’ve been the first hangover I’d had since about 1977, and it was in bloody Dundee!”
When we speak, Janey is sitting at home in Glasgow with her beloved sausage dog Honey. She has, she tells me casually, been knitting a scarf for Liam Neeson.
“My pal’s a friend of his, and he’s a fan of the voiceovers,” she laughs. “She said I’d knit him a scarf, but my knitting’s horrendous. Every colour you can think of, holes and everything.
“Liam said he can’t wait to wear it for Halloween.”
Janey Godley is still ‘Not Dead Yet’
Sniffling a bit, she apologises for being full of the cold – but it doesn’t stop her from firing on all cylinders.
After being diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2021, she’s used to touring, gigging and creating, all while coping with the physical effects of illness.
Her 2023 tour, Not Dead Yet, was fashioned as her last hurrah as she faced a terminal diagnosis.
But since, as Janey puts it, “I didn’t die after that”, she’s heading back out on the road, and hitting Courier Country with a tour that she says is “the first of its kind”.
“I didn’t know I could just keep going, because nobody’s wrote the rules for this yet,” she says candidly. “And I’ve been improvising life since I’ve been alive. So I’m just gonnae keep going until I die.”
Janey Godley: On Stage and Screen will treat audiences to a documentary film, charting the last year of Janey’s life on tour, as well as delving into her upbringing in the East End of Glasgow.
And after the screenings, Janey herself will take to the stage for a stand-up set, a journey through the film’s outtakes, and a live Q&A.
As for the film itself, Janey says it illuminates the relationship between her and her daughter Ashley Storrie – a stand-up comedian in her own right – as they navigate living with cancer on tour.
“It was Ashley’s idea originally. She said to me: ‘If this is going to be the toughest, most definitive year of your life, let’s record it.”
Film shows the ‘in between bit’ of terminal cancer
And for Janey, it was “important to show that people with cancer still work and still live”.
“I’m not the only one,” she explains.
“There’s millions of people in this nation who have a terminal cancer diagnosis, who still have a day to day life.
“When you see it in Hollywood or on TV, they’re either in bed, baldy and dying, or they’ve just found out they’ve got cancer. There’s no in between bit.
“And I’m kind of showing the in between bit.”
As a comic who mines her own life for material, Janey is comfortable speaking about her cancer fight. She shares that she’s had a clear scan recently, despite her cancer number rising, which is good news.
But she admits the only way to live with the “constant uncertainty” of the disease is to “completely ignore it”.
“Every single scan, every single blood test, could mean the end for me,” she says. “People say things like: ‘Oh well, I could get hit by a bus tomorrow’. OK, but I’m being chased by a bus!
“There isn’t any rational way to deal with that.”
Online haters ‘have got every right to stay angry with me until I die’
However, she says that her friends have been key to helping her through what has been a difficult time.
“I think the biggest thing I got out of making the film was the compassion and the friendship of people,” she reflects. “I’ve got a tight-knit group of friends – Shirley, Monica, Elaine and Scott.
“I think watching those friendships hold me up has been very important.”
But where there are friends, there are enemies – of which Janey has her fair share.
She’s recently left X (formerly Twitter) after being hounded by hateful accounts.
Previously, she was “cancelled” after historic racist tweets of her own were uncovered.
“I got cancelled, then I got cancer,” she shrugs. “Everything becomes insignificant when you get told you’ve got a life-threatening disease.
“But having cancer won’t stop somebody being a bad person, if that’s what they think I am. And the haters have every right to their opinion.
“I understand that cancellation is a thing, and people have got every right to be hateful and angry,” she adds. “What they don’t have is the right to tell other people that they have to be hateful and angry as well.
“Still, those men have got every right to stay angry with me until I die.
“They can bask in their own anger while I drink their tears.”
‘I still shop in Lidl’ says ‘spendthrift’ Janey
Hate may be the price of fame, but for Janey, it’s worth the cost.
She’s been vocal in the past about her experiences growing up in poverty in Shettleston, and it’s a source of comfort for her now that her family will never have to face the difficulties she did.
“I have achieved that financial security,” she nods. “They’ll never have to worry about eating or heating, or any of those things that I worried about.
“But it’s not just down to me. Ashley’s created her own career and made her own money, and my husband (Sean Storrie) worked for years in pubs and brought his own money into it as well.”
Still, self-confessed “spendthrift” Janey says she still gets her milk and veggies from Lidl, and can’t bring herself to spend more than £20 on a handbag.
“That was the weird thing,” she says. “Now that I have financial security, I’m still very stringent with my money.”
Has she at least bought her dream purchase with her life’s earnings?
“No, I still haven’t bought a chopper bike!” she exclaims, hitting the arm of the couch – much to Honey’s disgust. “I’ve always wanted a chopper bike and I still haven’t bought one.
“The only kind of money I spend is I get nice jumpers made from Isolated Heroes, the Dundee designer,” she reveals.
“Ashley and I have bought heaps of stuff from them, they’re great. I think it’s important to support independent designers, especially Scottish ones.”
Dundee creatives are ‘bloody amazing’
Indeed, Janey reckons that aside from the “brilliant” Clark’s bakery, Dundee’s creative community is what really sets the city apart from others.
“The creative output – not just the V&A, but the creative output from the actual people of Dundee – is bloody amazing,” she says.
As a keen watercolour painter herself, she’s looking forward to revisiting the waterfront when her show rolls into Tayside and Fife.
“There’s something historical and fascinating about that stretch of water, it’s quite evocative,” she says. “It’s got such a strong current in it, and then it can look so calm.
“I’d love to come and paint that again.”
Janey Godley: On Stage And Screen is in St Andrews on March 16, Stirling on April 5, Kirkcaldy on April 13 and Dundee on April 20. For tickets or more information, visit her website.
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