The Scottish comedian Janey Godley has died aged 63.
Godley’s death comes one month after she moved to a hospice for end-of-life care, with her daughter announcing earlier this week that she was in the “final beats of her life”.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the death of our client Doctor Janey Godley on 2nd November,” her agent said on Saturday 2 November.
“Janey died peacefully in the wonderful Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice in Glasgow surrounded by her loved ones. She will be hugely missed by her family, friends and her many fans.
“She will be remembered for her legendary voice overs of Nicola Sturgeon during the pandemic, her hilarious and outspoken comedy, but most of all for just being ‘Janey’.”
In September 2024, as she was due to begin her UK tour Why Is She Still Here?, Godley was advised by doctors to stop working “for the foreseeable future” because her cancer was spreading.
On 25 September 2024, Godley shared a video on social media confirming that she was getting palliative care and would be going into a hospice.
She also thanked the NHS and those who have cared for her as well as her family, friends and fans for their support.
“So I’m now in palliative care and I’m at end-of-life care now in the hospital”, she said in the video.
“The chemo ran out of options and I just couldn’t take any more of it and the cancer has spread. So it looks like this will be getting to near the end of it and it’s really difficult to speak about this and say to people.”
She was given the all-clear in 2022 but announced the following year that the disease had been found in her abdomen. Despite this news, she continued with her tour in February and March 2023.
Godley told ITV’s Lorraine that fellow comedian Jimmy Carr played a key role in convincing her to continue her tour despite her diagnosis.
She said: "I decided to cancel the tour, and my mate Jimmy Carr said, ‘Is your mouth not working?’ I went, ‘Yeah, my mouth works,’ and he said, ‘Well get back on tour.’”
Born in 1961, the Glaswegian, real name Jane Godley Currie, rose to prominence in the public eye following her parodies of then-Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon during the Covid pandemic.
Godley became a viral hit with her voiceover videos dubbing then-first minister Sturgeon’s daily Covid briefings during the pandemic. Her parody videos continued to be a hit going forward, especially after mocking the controversial influencer Andrew Tate following his spat with climate activist Greta Thunberg.
With her videos impersonating Sturgeon going viral (the politician joked that Godley was her “alter-ego”), the comic was enlisted to front a government Covid awareness campaign.
However, in September 2021, a series of racist, ableist and offensive tweets made by Godley in 2011 resurfaced online, leading to public condemnation and her being dropped from the campaign.
“I said things that I thought were funny, and I thought wasnae important, but it was important and words hurt,” she told The Independent in 2023. “So many people went, ‘I would never apologise’ – well, that’s you. I think it’s important that you accept you f*** up. And it doesnae matter if people don’t accept your apology, they don’t have to… Freedom of speech isnae freedom of responsibility.”
She was diagnosed two months after she was dropped from the Covid campaign, having been inspired to get checked out after reading a tweet from presenter Julia Bradbury that first alerted her to the symptoms of ovarian cancer (feeling bloated, needing to urinate a lot, not being able to eat due to constantly feeling full).
Godley had noticed a swelling in her stomach and a loss of appetite, so underwent blood tests; just 24 hours later she received the diagnosis. She had Covid at the time and had to wait seven weeks for a hysterectomy, “knowing that that tumour was sitting inside me all over Christmas”. After the operation, doctors informed her it was stage 3, “which isnae survivable”.
Even though she found success later, Godley did not have an easy start to life. She was born into poverty, which was rife in 1960s Glasgow, to parents who both struggled with alcohol addictions. She and her sister were also abused by their maternal uncle who, 30 years later, was taken to court by them and sentenced to two years in prison in 1996. Her mother died in 1982 after falling into the Clyde River. Godley believes that she was murdered by her violent boyfriend at the time but no charges were ever brought against him.
Candidly speaking to The Scotsman in 2004, she said: “My mum was murdered. She ended up in the Clyde. I was abused by an uncle and ended up marrying into a family of gangsters." Indeed, Godley married her husband Sean Storrie, the son of a Glaswegian gangster when she was just 19 and spent her 20s running a pub with him in Calton, an area which in 2015, reportedly had the lowest life expectancy in the UK.
In 2019, she told The Guardian: “I spoke about my Ma being murdered, child abuse, gangsters. Back then, even comics were saying: ‘You shouldn’t talk about that.’ But I’m so glad I did. The amount of people that came up to me and said: ‘I was abused and I’ve never laughed before.’ One of the most important things about comedy is nobody gets to tell you what you can joke about, as long as you’re punching up and not punching down.”
Godley’s comedy career began in 1994, where she chose to use her middle name as her stage name rather than her surname or maiden name claiming that both sides of her family had “let her down”.
She recalled saying: “I don’t want to be Janey Storrie any more, because your family let me down, and I don’t want to be Janey Currie because my family let me down. I’m going to use my middle name and legally become Janey Godley. The only family who haven’t let me down are the Godleys because I don’t know them.” She legally changed her name to Godley in 1995.
Success in the comedy world began to arrive for Godley in the early 2000s where she won a series of awards. TV and film work soon followed appearing on the likes of The Alex Salmond Show and Have I Got News for You and the 2018 Jessie Buckley film, Wild Rose.
In 2023, the comedian became the winner of the inaugural Sir Billy Connolly Spirit of Glasgow Award at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival.
Aside from her comedy work, Godley is possibly best known for the time she protested against Donald Trump at his Turnberry golf course, showing up with a sign telling the politician he was a “c**t.”
In October 2023, Godley received an honourary degree from the University of Glasgow. Paying tribute, the institution wrote in a short statement: “It is an honour to bestow an honorary doctorate on the incredible Dr Godley. We send all our love and support from UofG to Janey and her family.”
