If you think Frank McCourt, of Angela's Ashes, had it bad, then you've obviously never met Janey Godley. Yet somehow she manages to see the funny side to life, writes Colene McKessick

Janey has suffered a lot through the past 46 years. As a child, she was sexually abused by her uncle. As a teenager, her mother's body was found in the Clyde. As a young woman, she married into Glasgow's gangland and nearly faced imprisonment. As a mother, she has watched 22 of her close friends die from heroin abuse.

Other than sounding like a script from River City, this would normally be enough to push people over the edge. In any case, they certainly wouldn't find it comfortable to talk about.

But in Janey Godley's case, her past has become her living. Every night, she stands in front of a crowd and not only speaks frankly and candidly about her violent past, she makes jokes about it.

"Most comedians lie and people believe it. I tell the truth and people don't," she said.

Compared to Billy Connolly for her humorous and blunt delivery of shocking and dark issues, Janey is bringing her show Good Godley, a sell-out hit at last year's Edinburgh Festival, to the Crown Court Hotel in Inverness tonight.

Named 38th in the Hot 100 "people who have made the biggest impact on cultural life in Scotland over the past 12 months", just behind new Dr Who David Tennant, the former pub landlady is in demand.

Based on her bestselling autobiography Handstands in the Dark, tonight's show follows the big gory stories of Janey's life, including those which couldn't be printed in the book. Stories so shocking that, for legal reasons, the audience can't even talk about them outside the show.

"It's like The Mousetrap but funny, you know?" she says in her loud and brash Glaswegian tone.

"It's just the whole story about my life growing up, and the thing is I'm a comedian and it's OK to have such strange subject matter in my hands," she says.

Although she may joke about her past - "the funny thing is, I believe my mum was murdered and my in-laws are gangsters" - it has taken Janey some time to come to this point.

With her don't-give-a-damn attitude and speech littered with expletives, you could be forgiven for believing she is invincible.

Underneath this impressive bravado, however, is a woman who has suffered tremendous physical and emotional abuse, sent an uncle to prison and watched those around her succumb to the 1980s heroin epidemic in the slums of Glasgow.

"I do make glib of the whole situation, but I know what happened to me," she says in an almost childlike voice.

"I understand the gravity of what happened; it is horrific, and sometimes I still don't sleep very well if I think about it."

In an instant, she manages to slip back into shouty Janey Godley, the stage name she adopted to symbolise a new start in her life.

"I just think, hell it's not my cross to bear, and it happened a long time ago.

"Of course it affected me, but I'm one of these people who go well, yeah it messed me up a bit, I wrote about it, I got my uncle sent to prison and I'm not ashamed of being verbal about it.

"People expect me to be an alcoholic who sits in the corner chewing my hair.

"Why is it that we can't accept that some people just get on with it?"

It's easy to see how people can assume that she would have been affected at some point in her life.

As a child, she lived in Shettleston in a tenement with her alcoholic father and a mother who relied on Valium to see the day through.

When Janey was just 20, her mother went missing with her abusive boyfriend and was discovered dead a few days later.

When she was just 18, Janey married the son of one of Glasgow's most notorious gangsters, and for many years they ran a pub together. When police seized weapons from their property, Janey came very close to spending the rest of her adult life in a high-security prison.

Although she somehow finds a funny angle to all of these situations, there is one subject which seems to have affected her much more deeply than any other.

From the ages of five to 12, Janey was sexually abused and eventually raped by her uncle. Although she and her sister knew they were both suffering at the hands of their mother's brother, neither spoke of it until they were grown women with families of their own.

In 1996, Janey and her sister took the man they had both feared as children to court, where he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. On his first night in Barlinnie, he had both of his arms broken.

"Talking and writing about what happened has made me a much stronger person," she said.

"It has made me face my biggest fear. You see, it's the silence that bonds you and your abuser and the minute you break that silence, he has lost all control of the situation.

"It wasn't easy for me to go to the police - people from my group of society don't talk to the police in general.

"And they knew me already because of my husband's family, but finally talking about what this disgusting man had done to me was the best therapy I could have had."

Since having her uncle imprisoned, Janey has committed herself to helping others in her situation, whether it be making others realise that abusers can still be convicted years after the abuse has occurred, or talking to those who have been through a similar situation.

"When I owned the pub, a man came up to me and said: 'Are you not worried that everyone will know you had sex with your uncle?'

"I couldn't believe what I was hearing. The shame isn't mine; I was only five, for goodness sake.

"He represented that section who still believe that because you've been abused you're dirty and tarnished."

Janey has also received critical praise for her play The Point of Yes, written to warn her daughter Ashley, now 20, of the effects that heroin abuse can have on your life. She has since taken the play to high-security prisons where she has worked with users and former addicts on a level to which they can relate.

In 2006, Janey was recognised for her work with former addicts and children from difficult backgrounds when she was nominated for Scottish Woman of the Year.

It is just one accolade among many. It is easy, after all, to forget what Janey does best - stand-up comedy.

Her shows have sold out at the Edinburgh Festival; she has performed to some of the toughest crowds in Queens, New York, and spent a large part of last year touring New Zealand, where she was awarded Best International Comedian.

"People say I'm like having that annoying gabby cleaner from the local toilets standing yapping in your living-room," she says with a giggle.

"I just talk; anything can be funny.

"Maths could be funny. Apparently, you can read the phone book and make it funny, but I couldn't."

When she talks, everything is a joke. She sounds like a small child who has heard her dad telling dirty jokes and is passing them on to her friends.

Janey believes that humour is just something built into all Scottish people; it's part of our culture.

"You know, it's that whole thing of when you stand at a bus stop in Scotland, there's always one old wee man who just starts telling you that his wife has just had her kidney out. You don't get that anywhere else.

"We just talk through things, we have no stiff upper lip - in fact, we usually don't know when to keep ours closed," she says with a laugh that comes from the soles of her boots.

"We are inherently storytellers and I think that my audiences respect the fact that what I'm telling them is the truth; it's just one of the stories in my life.

When she steps back and takes a look at her life now, Janey doesn't see the issues which plagued her early years.

"The more people tell me that I can't do something, the harder I'm going to try," she shouts, in a voice which would have sent William Wallace running with his kilt between his legs.

"People always put me down because of my background, but look at me now.

"My English teacher once told me I was smelly scum with nits who would never amount to anything.

"For a woman who never got a single O level, I have written award-winning plays, I work as a journalist and I've written a bestselling book.

"If I met that teacher now, I wouldn't use any fantastic flourishes of the English language, because he doesn't deserve it.

"I would simply say: get it up ye."

I don't think for a minute she would say anything else.