Walking into The Classic, we find Janey Godley doing a bit of ushering. This is setting the tone for the evening; a confident, friendly woman without pretension but bursting with presence.

Godley is not just a comedian. She takes one of the most harrowing things that could happen in anyone’s family and finds a way to laugh through it. She’s a goddamn healer!

This healing alchemy is threaded throughout the show, and we love her for it. She tells us about being from Glasgow and what it means to grow up with a fiercely Catholic mammy who doesn’t do domestic.

Godley claims this (and another fact I won’t include here) is the reason for her absolute lack of domestic flair. I rejoice that there is another woman out there who doesn’t get off on endless stretches of gleaming surface, who finds a certain level of house-keeping utterly pointless.

Godley has the gift; is a gift. I am laughing yet can’t help but process some pain at the same time. This is deep comedy; this is the stuff you come back for again and again.

She’s got balls of steel when required and isn’t above making fun of her husband or throwing around obscenities. She plays deep, but also enjoys a good frolic!

This is the comedienne you want to take home to meet your mum, the one you’d like to cook for, the one you want to hug. Good Godley, am I a groupie? So be it.
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Janey Godley (Scotland) is a regular of the Comedy Festival, with this being her third visit in the last five years.

Godley’s anecdotes from her own life are refreshing, particularly when so many female comedians seem determined to outdo the men with foul language and references to genitals; a sort of desperate one-upmanship. Godley of course will go to crass places, but it’s funny – and real.

There’s always been a brutal honesty running through her work (and indeed her life), she’s the epitome of someone you describe as naturally funny; she is not on stage playing a role. This time she focuses on tales of her husband ("the gangster"), finding humour in his Asperger’s Syndrome; describing the blatant honesty he possesses in social situations, telling people their babies are ugly, or their clothes make them look fat.

Godley’s ability to laugh at the madness in her life and to draw from situations that can very much be described by the cliché of the truth being stranger than fiction make her an instant winner, year after year.

I loved her show last year and this year too. And I hope she’ll be back next year.

Both Godly and Jason Cook are must-see shows, and taking place one after the other, at the same venue, it makes for a great night out. The mix of observational humour, reflections and raw storytelling is a common feature.
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Comedy Festival favourite Janey Godley is familiar, warm and funny with an acerbic Glaswegian tongue to match.

This is Godley’s fourth visit to our shores and it is evident in her warmth, familiarity and in her references to local culture. She gleefully observes how ironic it is that our most infamous homeless person is naked.

She has the kiwi humour bone sussed and handles the audience with no nonsense. Whilst she might appear to be the nice wee Scottish cleaning lady, who has accidentally wandered onto the stage, she deals swiftly to those who might try to cross her.

There are topical references to the likes of co-compatriot Susan Boyle and her tufty hair, cat and moustache. Godley compares herself to Boyle but that is where the self-deprecating humour ends.

She is more interested in her unnamed (he’s a gangster called Tom) husband’s foibles. Her affectionate take on the opposite sex is that they are simpletons and good fun to exploit. Women, on the other hand, are a complex Rubik cube of emotions – with all the wee stickers rubbed off.

Godley is an actress, comedienne, author, playwright and journalist. Her autobiography Handstands in the Dark documents a violent upbringing in Glasgow. This autobiographical material is the starting point of many of the stories she tells. Like the ridiculous circumstances of sectarianism where your Mum said your Protestant dog wasn’t to play with the Catholic dog across the street.

The show’s title Domestic Godly refers to Godley’s complete bewilderment at all things domestic or wifely. She blames her mother whose culinary skills extended to serving an Oxo cube as a starter. In her defence, whilst Godley can’t make soup, she does give good head.

The personal stories allow the audience to readily see beyond the comedienne. She delivers some clangers that would normally stop any conversation dead but manages to move on without mockery or maudlin. ‘My mother was murdered.’ "My brother is a heroin addict.’ She jokes but there is sincerity about memory here. She honours her family and sees the funny side.

As Godley finishes her set she announces that she feels as if we have just had a chat. And it does. There is something incredibly familiar, funny and real.
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