1st July 2010
FIVE UK COMEDIANS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT
by Jay Richardson
Like the headline suggests, we at Punchline Magazine thought it was time to let you know about a handful of UK-based comedians you should keep your eyes on– the ones who aren’t Russell Brand, Ricky Gervais or Eddie Izzard, the dudes you already know about it. To that end, we asked our UK comedy correspondent Jay Richardson to shed some light on the topic. No 2: JANEY GODLEY Marrying into a Scottish gangster family, her mother murdered, Janey Godley, like Billy Connolly, has turned her tough Glasgow upbringing into the basis of many of her funniest anecdotes. Performing all over the world, this redoubtable raconteur is as happy bletherin’ to George Clooney and Woody Allen as she is the endless succession of junkies, waifs and strays she meets on her travels. Although she rarely knows her set before she starts talking, retaining myriad stories in her head, many, such as the account of how she accidentally killed an old man, tend to linger in the memory. A former bar owner in one of the Glasgow’s grimmest parts, she deliberately overcharged former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for a pint to test his financial acumen and was once arrested for gun possession. Currently writing a children’s show with her daughter Ashley for the Edinburgh Fringe, the sometime playwright, newspaper columnist and drug addiction activist published a compelling autobiography in 2005, Handstands in the Dark. |