14th-20th December 2007
JUST FOR LAUGHS
by Barbara Lewis
A comedian still toughing it out on the circuit is Janey Godley, regarded as one of Scotland's funniest women. Her performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe won her rave reviews. One critic observed she had “a lack of self doubt rare in a female comedian”. That she was born in one of the roughest parts of Glasgow and spent around 15 years running a pub with her husband in “an extraordinarily violent and drug-ravaged red-light district”, could be the secret of her great comic success. But she does not underestimate the difficulty of her career choice. “Comedy is a job that requires working late nights and long hours away from home,” said Godley. “This is usually a male role in the workplace... A woman leaving her kids to go stay in a hotel and go talk in bars... well, suddenly it seems a stupid choice... Stand-up comics are basically travelling, wandering troubadours, who wander the world telling funny stories. It takes a lot of guts to take a chance on that as a career. Many women have better thought-out plans than that.” |