Janey Godley dead: Inside the life of award-winning Scots comic who overcame abuse
JANEY Godley managed to find humour in the darkest places from growing up in poverty, to horrendous childhood abuse and even the “murder” of her mum.
But the comedienne, who has sadly passed away from cancer aged 63, insisted that making light of a bad situation was her way of dealing with her traumatic past.
She even found a way of making people laugh during the long Covid lockdowns with her hilarious voice overs of Nicola Sturgeon’s pandemic news briefings.
Janey once said: “If you find the humour you can deal with anything.
“I’ve made death, child abuse and domestic violence funny. And it can be done. It’s all about taking the audience with you.”
Born Janey Currie in Glasgow’s East End district of Shettleston on January 20, 1961, she was raised the youngest of four with her two elder brothers Mij and Vid along with big sister Ann, by parents Annie and Jim Currie.
Her father was an alcoholic while her mother was so addicted to Valium that sometimes a young Janey would find her “unconscious on the floor”.
She recalled: “My sister, brothers and I had almost constant infestations of fleas and headlice. Sometimes, I’d scoop water from puddles in the street when I was thirsty.
“I was too frightened to go home because of what might be waiting for me there.”
But the main reason she never wanted to go home was because the sexual abuse that began when she was just five years old by her mum’s brother David Percy – 12 years Janey’s senior.
She says: “He would wait for my mammy and dad to go out, then take me to my bedroom and tell me to lie down.
“I would shut my brain down and pretend I was in Disneyland – that perfect place I had seen on television with the big magical castle.
“It was around this time that I got the nickname ‘Shakey Cakey’ at school because I trembled so much. No one ever thought to ask why a small child should shake so violently.”
Outspoken even as a child, Janey decided to tell her mum, but was immediately warned off from going to her father.
She says: “I felt as if the abuse was entirely my fault. I knew then that I had to live with the shame.”
When Janey was 12 her dad moved out of the family home causing her mum to “fall apart”.
Annie Currie was later sectioned, before she turned to alcohol, taking up with a violent boyfriend Peter Greenshields.
In 1982, when Janey was 21, her mum’s “badly bruised body” was found in the River Clyde. She was just 47.
Her boyfriend was never charged by police, but Janey was always convinced of his guilt.
In 2021 she Tweeted: “She would have been 86 today if her boyfriend hadn’t killed her in 1982.
“Peter said she ‘fell into the river’ and he didn’t bother to report it – cops agreed. But we won’t forget you Annie Currie.”
At the time of her mum’s death, Janey had been married for two years to Sean Storrie, a bouncer at Shettleston’s Palaceum pub, owned by his gangster dad Old George Storrie, who had a “fearsome reputation”.
Although the couple had met when she was 17 they came from the great sectarian divide, with Janey raised Protestant while Sean and his six brothers were Catholic.
When they got hitched On September 27, 1980, at the Catholic Chapel of St Marks, Janey said: “The Storries all hated me. One of his brothers spat at me on our wedding day.”
Despite that they became landlords when Sean’s dad asked them to run his premises The Nationalist Bar in “The Calton” – one of the roughest areas in the city.
Janey says: “Some of our regulars were people you would not want to meet. Four of them raped a prostitute and slashed her to shreds with razors.
“The heroin trade boomed, and young girls who used to come in for cola and crisps were now selling sexual favours to pay for a fix.
“But we were safe from violence only because of Old George’s reputation. Everyone knew that if you messed with the Storrie sons, you were in deep trouble.”
The couple’s only child Ashley was born in 1986 and by 1993 they had renovated the pub and renamed it the Weavers Inn, where one day she took a surprise call from her uncle.
After Janey slammed the phone down she told her stunned regulars: “He used to sexually abuse me as a child. I hate him.”
Sobbing she phoned her big sis Ann, who also broke down and revealed: “Oh Janey! No, no, no! I thought if I let him touch me, he would not touch you’”
In October 1996 justice finally caught up with David Percy, then 47, for sexually abusing the two sisters, who both gave evidence at his four-day trial at Glasgow Sheriff Court. They later waived their right to anonymity.
The beast had denied all charges but was found guilty and sentenced to two years behind bars.
Janey said: “This wasn’t about revenge – it was about justice.”
With her uncle’s conviction Janey was finally able to put her past behind her as she began making a name for herself on the comedy circuit when she won an open mic competition at the first attempt in 1994.
That was when she legally changed her married name Storrie to Godley – her middle name – stating: “As Janey Currie, I’d been an abused child.
“As Janey Storrie, I’d been a wife and pub landlady. Now it was time to be me. Someone new, starting afresh, with my own identity.”
In 2001 she finally took the leap into her new profession by becoming a full-time comic with a residency at Glasgow’s Bar Miro.
The following year she won Best Show Concept at the New Zealand International Festival, published her first best selling autobiography Handstands in the Dark in 2005 and has made numerous TV appearances as herself on the BBC satirical panel show Have I Got News For You.
In 2016 she went viral when she greeted Donald Trump as he visited Scotland his Turnberry golf course with the homemade sign declaring “Trump is a C***”.
Janey has also had acting roles in the BBC Scotland soap River City, the 2018 Jessie Buckley film Wild Rose and the BBC One crime series Traces in 2019.
But in 2021 she was sensationally axed as the face of a TV Covid Awareness campaign by the Scottish Government for historical racist tweets, with digs at black celebs including singer Kelly Rowland.
She apologised and donated her £12,000 fee to charity. Later the same year she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
After a full hysterectomy she announced in June 2022 that she was cancer-free, only for the disease to return in December that year.
Then in September Janey announced that she was receiving palliative care and would be moving into a hospice, apologising profusely to her fans for cancelling her nationwide tour.
But as Janey once said: “I have never been happier than when I am on stage in a comedy club making people laugh – even when my subject has been the darker episodes in my life.”