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07/21/2008 Europe/London +0100 BST |
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 Name: Janey Godley Country: United kingdom City: Glasgow/London Photo Album
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Having spent weeks in Edinburgh at the Fringe I am slightly disorientated back in Glasgow.
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  I am sorry I was late so here is a run down of my fringe 2007. The chat show was an awesome experience and some of the guests were a delight, Edwina Currie, Julian Clary, Ray Wyre, John Smeaton ( The airport hero who fought off the terrorists in Glasgow), Brendon Burns, Tom Robinson, Paul Provenza, Mick Miller, Jim Bowen and many more all made me intensely happy. The chat show got a great five star review and I was over the moon with the format, the people were great who came along and asked interesting questions and my daughter Ashley stood in for a few late comers and made the show even funnier as she impersonated their persona! Ashley’s best mate Bobi, came and stayed with us and it was her first fringe ever, she flyered and did some PR and stage management. My baby niece Abi came along and flyered as well and she is only four, she actually did a mic check as well and did a sing a long at the Stand Comedy club! We are a family of entertainers, Abi’s mum Ann Margaret was amazed to see so many people who knew Abi from my videos on MySpace and YouTube…Abi is famous! The comedy show was the best I ever did, it got rave reviews and the run sold out, the first time I ever had a full sold out run at Edinburgh, it was wonderful. I had a great team and love everyone who helped me this year. Ashley really pulled out her finger and made the biggest effort to make sure things went smoothly, she is my absolute pride and joy. Writing for the newspaper The Scotsman has been a bit trying for me during the fringe and it took some stress to get through it all. Ok enough of the nice stuff, I was a grumpy cow at times and drove everyone mental. The flat we stayed in had a washing machine that broke down and the estate agent took my clothes to wash and ended up screaming down the phone to me “I cant touch the bra’s” he is the GAYEST man in the world, he actually screamed and stuffed them into a bag with salad tongs rather than touch them…he is THAT GAY! So that was funny. The John Smeaton special was a great day. John is the accidental hero who tackled the terrorist when Glasgow Airport was attacked in June and that day sold out, Bobi was great at herding the audience and press into the room and arranging the photo call and she had never done that before. John was an awesome guest and such a wonderful guy to chat to, I loved him. I took John all around the Fringe after the chat show and he was greeted like a hero by all the comics that met him on the night. I slept like a baby this year as our flat was outside the main busy part of the city but the fucking seagulls followed me and screeched into my window every morning at 5am coz they are bastards of hell. Life is good today I am stress free and happy, I met some amazing people who came to the show and it lifts my spirits every time they hug me as they come out and shared a smile with me, it makes me feel awesome that they enjoyed the show. My big talking window went into the Pleasance Dome main window site; it is the very first of its kind. It was basically a huge screen that has a projected film and promo of me and the window ‘talks’ and as people went by they were amazed at this new technology and stopped and watched me then went off and bought tickets! Motomedia were the people who installed this window and they are an awesome company and helped me out great. Go check the out their website www.motomedia-uk.com and see the product in action. I am onto my last few days here in Edinburgh. I will talk soon.
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Dear all my Blogging mates, I am so very sorry I haven’t blogged in a week, this is the longest period of abstinence since I started Blogging in 2004. The Edinburgh Fringe has me in its cast iron grip and I haven’t had complete access to the internet and what with working lots…well…I am tired. So it’s not the end of me because I am here aren’t I? The Edinburgh Fringe is great so far, selling out at the Pleasance every night has been a joy to behold and so far I have got two five star reviews (one for the chat show and the stand up) and a clutch of four stars for both. As you may well all be aware that the Scottish airport hero John Smeaton is coming on the chat show, he is the bloke that helped the police when the terrorist tried to explode their car at our wee airport back in June. The weather has been shitty and cold in Edinburgh this year but I am having fun. Husband has been strangely helpful and Ashley my daughter is just a wee worker bee for me, as is her mate Bobi, both of them pulling together to get the flyers out. The Green room where my chat show is on is almost finished being built now that the fringe is almost over! We had problems with the radio microphones but have had on some amazing guests. I am loving the Green Room despite the hitches. Last night at my comedy show up at the Pleasance Dome, a wee woman shouted out when I had finished “Excuse me we have two minutes left, please talk more” which can only be a good thing right? So I did. I am also getting the comedy show and the chat show filmed and it will be up on the website as soon as humanly possible. Thanks for sticking by me…talk soon.
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The amazing John Smeaton is the man who kicked into the terrorists who tried to explode Glasgow airport back in June. He is my exclusive guest on my chat show on August 23rd at the Green Room venue.
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Well after letting in the press on the first days on my shows I have so far got a 5 star review in the Glasgow Herald and a 4 star review in the Three Weeks Magazine! I am well pleased like you cannot imagine. Ashley is having all sorts of artistic differences going on at her play, nothing to do with her, but she is suffering the fall out of others being difficult. I empathise with her. I cannot seem to help her as I am so busy, though I wish I could. The private bars here in Edinburgh are so packed, they all give you a wrist band and the fucking things take forever to rip off, I feel TAGGED like a prisoner. I am so annoyed at them but the private performers bars insist you have them on. Life at the flat is mad, having that many people stay with me is making me nuts, and I keep tiding others people’s possessions and they can never find them. But they should keep their stuff tidy or I will stuff it under a table. Ashley’s room is a complete swamp. I am sure there are five Romanian orphans, two broken bikes, seven smelly hippies and two racoons camped in the corner. I even think I saw a Buffalo run past her en suite toilet yesterday. What the fuck is she doing in there? How can she live in that mess? It is starting to resemble Hiroshima, post atom bomb. My room is tidy and organised and all my clothes are on hangers, Ashley’s clothes look torn, raped and abused. How they look ok on her is an amazing feat of magic. Meanwhile husband is cooking more food than an old Irish housewife and keeps making me sit down to dinner, has the man no idea how life at a festival works? “Eat your roast beef and have some cabbage” he shouts. Cabbage and stage time do not work together, its like mixing heroin and brain surgeons- bad things will happen-I am farting like a sailor. He may as well give me a whoopee cushion and a megaphone and let me loose on the crowds. My manager John, spends most days surrounded by computers and printers, he looks like the head of Jodrell Bank Space Mission, what the fuck is he doing? Working on the next flight to the moon? Printing out the transcripts of the Oliver North Trial? Contacting the entire national staff of the NHS to inform them I got a five star review? I have threatened to wrap him in crepe paper, hang him from the light fitting and invite angry Scottish children to use him as a pińata and let them loose with sharp sticks. Meanwhile husband thinks that despite working like a fucking coal miner down a smelly dark pit for hours a day, I am up for gymnastic type sex!…at night my calves are so sore from walking up and down cobble stones I feel like one of those Egyptian slaves who carried slabs on their back up a pyramid and then died on the way back down the hill. I need SLEEP…not sex…or cabbage…or…tidying up, I need sleep. Talk soon.
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Well we are all manic. Ashley’s play has started down at the Ego venue and my two shows are going great guns. The ticket system is a pain in the arse. Firstly, the Fringe Box office and the Pleasance can’t decide how to work out and sell the tickets and then they are varying accounts of how many have been sold. It’s so annoying. My chat show at the Green Room has been such good fun, the venue is still a bit up in the air and they have yet to get proper signs to let people know where the place is and that’s making me insane. My comedy show ‘Tell It Like It Is’ up at Pleasance Dome is selling well and we have had reviewers in from day one so I am eagerly anticipating them. I did a video promo with Paul Provenza for my show, I stand there and chat to camera and Paul sexually assaults me basically, well I say assault, he gropes me and I ignore it and keep chatting to camera as if nothing is happening. It’s funny, but odd. Then Paul does his promo and I come on camera, bend in front of his flies, unzip them and pull out a banana then start eating it at his crotch. It looks mental. Then I almost killed someone by accident. A young guy at the Green Room hurt his back and I gave him co codamol painkillers, then I went into my show and when I came out people were running about trying to find me as he had taken a reaction to the painkillers that I had gave him. All is well and all is mad, but I am getting there.
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At this time of the year, I always have deep scary dreams. It’s the stress of the fringe playing on my mind. This one was particularly horrifying. It started with my daughter’s best pal Victoria, she was standing in my living room and we were jokingly mocking her about a boy she had met. She took it badly and ran into my bedroom and climbed onto my bed and opened our big window. We live on the top floor. I watched as she climbed backwards through the window and held on with both hands onto the frame, screaming she was going to let herself go. My daughter was standing on the bed begging her to come back in and for some reason I could hear my husband down in the back car park shouting at her to stop the nonsense. In the moment I stood there I felt the utter depth of her soul and I actually understood her need to let go, in between all the screaming and watching my daughter beg her to stop, I actually felt the horror of Victoria’s pain. It was disgusting and hollow. Like a bottomless pit in my stomach. That one second of her pain was revealed to me like she had transferred all her deepest fears and sorrow to me in one glance and my soul had sucked it in and let it penetrate my heart. Victoria just closed her eyes and let herself go out of the window. My daughter Ashley fell on the bed hysterical and wept. I ran out of the bedroom and ran about panicking then ran back into the bedroom and the scene that faced me made my heart stop. Ashley was standing up on the window ledge, she made eye contact with me, and she never spoke, she smiled and her eyes twinkled and then she waved, and then let herself drop into the emptiness. I ran to the window paralysed with fear and watched her fall and then she bounced off a parked car and her broken dead body lay stiffly beside her friend Victoria who was splattered all over the concrete. My husband was screaming as his daughter lay in the backyard dead. I woke up screaming and ran into Ashley’s room and there she was all sleepy and tangled up in her duvet. Her favourite teddy was snuggled up in her arms and her dark hair was spread around her head like a dark wavy halo. Her pale face was serene, her dark eyelashes sat thickly on her cheeks and that beautiful pouting rose coloured mouth made her look like a baby. I stood in the silence of her bedroom and watched her for a few moments. I was recalling the sheer horror that I had felt seconds ago and knew in that moment that if she died I would have to go to my death to; I couldn’t bear to live my life without knowing she was there. I know grief, I felt it last week. The rest of the fringe will be piss easy. I have my daughter safely hugging me as I write this. Life is good.
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Now not only am I having the worst period pains in my life, but I have to get packed up and move to Edinburgh and start doing my fringe shows. I had the most hectic weekend as well. On Friday night I did my comedy preview show at Kilmarnock, then went to the Central station and got on the late night sleeper to London. The cabin was tiny and hot, one wee squinty bed with the covers so tightly tucked in I had to squeeze my fat bloated body in. I couldn’t sleep, the bloody train rocks and shoogles all through the night and I kept waking up thinking the train was crashing! Nice… Anyway managed to get to London on time to do the fabulous BBC Radio 4 show ‘Saturday Live’ with the ever so cool Tom Robinson, he is amazing. I love the show and it was a great experience being on it and Tom is a wonderful guy. I am such a fan of his. Then I got in a cab and went to Heathrow to fly back home and do my other preview in Kilmarnock. The show was not as high energy as I wanted but after having such a heavy period and being tried….well I was all out of sparks! Though the show went fine. Last night I sat and watched ZULU that old 60s movie with Michael Caine and Stanley Baker and pissed myself laughing at the accents and attitude of those poncy British Soldiers. How presumptuous of them to assume they could colonise a nation with a stiff upper lip and silver service tea set! I have to say though it was shot beautifully and the scenery was stunning. I am going to watch ZULU DAWN next and catch up on my old films. I always do this at Edinburgh time; I get out all my old film classics and watch them. It takes the heat off the stress of doing two shows a day. So it is now Monday. I am getting packed up and today I go through to Edinburgh to do my technical run through. I am still woozy and tired but ready to roll. I hope the two shows go well ‘Janey Godley’s Chat Show’ at the Green room 5pm and ‘Tell It Like It Is’ my comedy show up at the Pleasance at 7pm.
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Yes I know it’s hard to believe but I actually have my own tribute act! That’s me and Billy Connolly has our own personal imitators in Scotland. I have arrived! He is a Scottish comic and he does a character called Senga McInally and it’s based on me. I heard about it through a mate and she told me it was hilarious, so I checked out his website and there he was in a black curly wig and in a dress, and actually does look like me! Except he kind of ruined the image by standing holding a beer and I don’t drink! He goes on stage and does a parody of me and shouts about my best selling book! (I couldn’t pay for this kind of advertisement) I am so chuffed. Anyway I popped down to a wee bar locally where he was gigging last weekend and asked him personally to come on my chat show at the Edinburgh Fringe at the Green Room at 5pm. He did at first agree but it seems now he can’t make it and I am so upset. Can you imagine having your very own tribute act on your very own show? My husband told me that until you have an impersonator you are a nobody, so at least I have discovered that I am famous enough to be recognised by audiences without even being there and that must say something. Even George Bush had his own impersonator on his stage at one event, and the UK Puppet show Spitting Image proved that you had to be someone to be parodied. Some other comics pointed out that his act is rather cruel about me, but I can’t see how that is true, if he goes to the bother of buying a black wig and dress and talks about my achievements then that’s not cruel. That’s good press. My daughter and I did an extreme tribute to Jade Goody on my website videos; if she wasn’t famous she wouldn’t be worth doing, so it’s all relevant! If he is nasty and cruel about me, fair play to him, I put myself up to be poked at and you have to take everything on the chin. I say stuff about famous people. I am just amazed that I am famous enough for audiences to have that laugh of recognition about me, that’s the amazing thing. Gobsmacked! Anyway I don’t believe that the guy would be cruel or nasty about me, why would he, he is my tribute guy! So a big round of applause and respect to Senga McInally and her continuous success is my thought on the matter. May she live to see another day?
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I remember about twelve years ago, I went to a private therapist to talk about the sexual abuse I had suffered as a child.
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