Janey Godley finds it ironic that even as she’s coping with terminal cancer, near-constant abuse, and calls on social media for her ‘cancellation’, she’s seldom been more in demand. Currently touring her Not Dead Yet stand-up show and publishing a memoir of the same name in August, and with her Radio 4 series The C Bomb returning shortly, she’s also now the focus of Janey; this candid documentary made by John Archer follows the Glaswegian comic as she performs around Scotland, and in Belfast and London.

Showing her treatment for ovarian cancer, revisiting the childhood home where she was sexually abused, and reflecting on her mother’s murder, viewers also see Godley discussing her hugely popular voiceover videos with one of their ‘stars,’ former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, and chatting about offence in comedy with Jimmy Carr. Culminating in an emotional performance at Glasgow’s 3000-seater SEC, the film is a poignant insight into a redoubtable storyteller exposing her vulnerability and admitting mistakes, but who is unable to hide her frustration at being forced to pump the brakes on her career.

‘I want to plan ahead but have to remember that I can only think three months into the future,’ the 63-year-old remarks bluntly at Glasgow Film Theatre, where Janey received its world premiere as the closing movie of the Glasgow Film Festival. ‘Right now, I’m waiting on a call to tell me how a scan went. I have to accept that I’m always going to be in treatment. And at some stage they’re going to say “we have run out of options; you’re going to die.” But I’m not pacing myself. I’m doing as much as I can, even if I might not live to see all of it.’

Godley’s deprived upbringing in Shettleston and marriage into a gangster family was memorably recounted in her 2005 autobiography Handstands In The Dark. But Janey also features video footage of the comic at 13 and the pub she ran in Glasgow’s Calton area during the 1980s and 90s, before her husband Sean’s family forced them out. What’s also captured is the sheer leap of faith Godley took when beginning stand-up in London in 1994, with her daughter and future support act Ashley Storrie still a young child and Sean struggling.

‘I had to make money because my husband couldn’t work,’ she recalls. ‘He had autism and a lot of problems emotionally after the fallout with his family. I was quite annoyed that I couldn’t get reviewed because I had so much riding on it. It wasn’t a fucking hobby. I wasn’t a middle-class Melinda who could just try it; I needed to make a living! And I did, buying a house in the West End of Glasgow from being funny. I sacrificed a lot. Ashley was left at home when she should have had two parents. The good news was that I was fucking good at it. You can say that I was outspoken and cheeky, that I was too chippy and working-class. But I always delivered the goods.’

It was Storrie who suggested shooting a documentary and she operates the camera during some of its most intimate moments. Now a Radio Scotland DJ, Storrie is about to star in Dinosaur, the BBC Three comedy-drama she co-created, and Godley is proud that her child has carved out her own career and won’t simply be remembered as ‘Janey’s daughter.’ The comic also reiterates her regret at some historic tweets using offensive language which resurfaced in 2021, maintaining that she was ‘just so ashamed, feeling like I had let down so many people and wanting to kill myself. The only thing that stopped me was my credit-card bill. Just knowing I had to pay that refocused me.’
Janey Godley: On Screen + On Stage tours Scotland between March and May; full dates at Janey Godley's official site; Janey was the closing movie at Glasgow Film Festival.