Breaking news: Janey Godley has been voted the 3rd funniest comedian in the UK in a TimeOut readers poll.  The only woman to make the list, she doesn’t even getting around to mentioning that herself, too busy chatting up the poor defenceless lighting boy. 

That’s once we’re seated, after she’s burst into the Classic Basement foyer loudly enquiring when her typically tardy Auckland audience was planning to head into the theatre, rounding us all up and shunting us on in.  Having just run through the rain from Jimeoin it feels like I’m really getting the full Northern Great British experience tonight. 

So who is this Janey Godley?  Well, she’s forty seven and comes from Glasgow where the life expectancy is shorter than it is in Iraq.  She’s grown up around brutal atrocities and is in town this week apparently to encourage us all to have a f**’en good chuckle about it.  This is no glamour show, it is pure classic standup: frank and human and laugh out loud funny, as the loudly laughing crowd will surely attest. 

…I always get to this point reviewing standup, where that’s all you really need to know innit – it’s a good laugh, yeah.  I’m also finding myself wishing I’d read more Irvine Welsh literature so I could confidently paraphrase Godley in phonetic Scots.  Och weel, nae matter.

In essence Tell It Like It Is is getting introduced to a number of Janey’s family – father, mother, brother, ex mother-in-law, husband, daughter and so on – through a series of anecdotal tales which illustrate not only the colourful characters she’s related to but also the dysfunctional desperation that goes along with them. 

She has a go at other things too, notably Helen Clark’s haircut, the irony of fake-tanned Glaswegian racists, patronising medical specialists and her proud encounter with then Prime Minister Tony Blair.  Her climactic story about her mum taking on her abusive school teacher is a violent Glasgow-style variation on the story in the classic country song Harper Valley P.T.A. 

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Janey Godley is a mum.  You can tell the minute she walks on stage, although she describes herself as looking more like "a fat feckin’ cleaning lady".  It’s in her gait; her resigned and slightly knackered presence tempered by a sense that she could suddenly lose her wick and fly into a fury. 

It’s like watching your mum do stand-up, if your mum was a hard as nails Glaswegian with a grim childhood of abuse.  The title of the show is totally apt, as Godley refuses to flinch from dishing the dirt.  Her humour is dark and gristly, emerging from tales of hardship and poverty, of humiliation and family illness.  The set-up gags don’t so much reach a payoff as evoke a bleak reality that you have to laugh at or it’ll kill you.

It’s not really laugh-a-minute comedy, but that’s no problem.  Godley artfully works the audience, alert and responsive without compromising her own way of telling her tales.  She’s smart too, quipping about Helen Clark’s haircut with more finesse than many kiwi comics might.  The crowd is with her all the way, even when the going gets heavy, or they miss a gag through the thick Glasgow accent.

What emerges through her set is a real love for family and for people in general.  Godley has values and they are solid as a rock, so solid in fact that she won’t bow down to anyone, not even the former Prime Minister of England, Tony Blair.  The anecdote of her incendiary meeting with Blair forms the climax of her set and it’s a triumphant story.  Whatever we’ve made of Godley the comedienne, we can only regard Godley the person as a fighter and a champion of virtue.

So, she may be frumpy, and frazzled, and getting too old to control her bladder, but like your mum she deserves respect.  If you like your comedy infused with wisdom and integrity, then Janey Godley is as good as it gets. 

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