Janey Godley, the Scottish comedian, actor and writer, who has died of cancer aged 63, performed to sell-out crowds across the UK, but it was on social media that she found her playground and her tribe.
It was there she achieved viral fame posting her comedy voiceovers of politicians and other public figures that were pithy, rude and sharply political. Most memorably, during the Covid-19 pandemic, she offered a sweary and exasperated version of daily briefings by the then first minister Nicola Sturgeon – “If I see any of yous outdoors I’ll put my toe up the crack of yer arse” – always ending with the catchphrase: “Frank, get the door!” Later the Royal Society of Edinburgh credited Godley with improving public engagement with health messaging.
Born in the east end of Glasgow, the youngest of four children of Jim Currie, who worked in the local steel foundry, and his wife, Annie, Godley described her childhood in her 2006 memoir Handstands in the Dark with the same black humour and lack of apology she became famous for on stage. Both parents struggled with alcohol addiction and “we were poor”, she told the Guardian in 2019. “I remember eating out of bins and being a teenager with dirty clothes. But I was bright and I loved reading, so I had the chance to escape. And I’m not ashamed of it, because it wasn’t my fault.”
She was sexually abused by an uncle throughout her childhood – as an adult, she took him to court, along with her sister, whom he had similarly abused, and secured a conviction.
After leaving Eastbank academy without any qualifications, in 1980 she married Sean Storrie, the son of a local gangster, at the age of 19.
Her parents separated in the 70s and in 1982 her mother died, murdered by her violent boyfriend, Godley believed, although he was never charged by the police despite her family’s protestations. Godley’s only child, Ashley, who is now a Bafta-nominated comic and presenter herself, was born in 1986 and Godley spent her 20s running her in-laws’ pub in the Calton district of Glasgow.
She and Storrie later walked out on her husband’s chaotic and violent family, but working as a barmaid in one of Glasgow’s roughest pubs had honed the comic timing and expert crowd control essential for a standup career.
After excelling at open-mic nights, she progressed quickly on the comedy circuit, using her middle name as a stage name, appearing on TV shows including Have I Got News For You and acting in the 2018 film Wild Rose.
“It was quite a shock to have a working-class, older woman – I was 35 and a mum – do this, and it got a few backs up,” Godley recalled in her Guardian interview. “I spoke about my Ma being murdered, child abuse, gangsters. Back then, even comics were saying: ‘You shouldn’t talk about that.’”
Godley was outspoken about progressive politics and the abuse of power, defending transgender rights and promoting the cause of Scottish independence, positions that garnered often vicious online abuse.
She acknowledged her own failings online in 2021, when she apologised for a series of historic tweets about black celebrities that she described as “horrific” and led to her being dropped from a Scottish government public health campaign.
Her position on Donald Trump brought her global renown – the day after the UK had voted to leave the EU in 2016, the then Republican nominee flew in to his golf course at Turnberry, on the south-west coast of Scotland. Fuelled by righteous fury that Scotland was “handcuffed to a nation that voted to leave Europe based on lies and racism”, as well as at Trump himself, Godley hand-wrote a succinct protest slogan and caught a bus to the coast. The photograph of a small but defiant woman, surrounded by police desperately trying to make her cover up her offending poster, went viral.
Godley told the Guardian at the time: “I think it’s important for women’s voices to be heard against someone who shows absolute disrespect for women.”
In November 2021, the comic announced she had ovarian cancer, and embarked on chemotherapy, after which she was given the all-clear in 2022. But a later scan showed signs of the disease in her abdomen and in September this year she cancelled her forthcoming tour, announcing she was receiving end of life care.
In her final weeks, Godley kept in close touch with her devoted online following from her hospice bed.
In one of her last personal clips, she told followers: “I don’t have all the answers that you have all the questions to, but I’m sending you all my love.”
Godley is survived by her husband and daughter.
• Janey Godley (Jane Godley Currie), comedian, actor and writer, born 20 January 1961; died 2 November 2024
