I have had a really exciting week. Tickets are selling well for my one woman show Janey Godley Live! At Garage on March 8th as part of the Glasgow Comedy festival and secondly I got offered my own weekly column in the Scotsman Newspaper.

I am over the moon and so looking forward to being a real proper journalist!
I have written for the Scotsman a few times before and they have been so supportive, it really is a quality UK paper.

My dad is very proud of me and I really want to go and find Miss Miller my old school teacher who encouraged me to write when I was ten. She always told me that I told great stories and she instilled so much confidence into my soul that I really felt good about myself at probably the most difficult time in my life.
I was being regularly sexually abused at that time.

Good teachers do make all the difference to young people.

On another note last night in Portsmouth as me and the other comics came out of the comedy club, we all gaped up at the moon…it was so round and pink it hung in the sky like a balloon…it was awesome and then we realised it was the lunar eclipse. I have never seen it look so beautiful and rounded like that, we all just stood and stared upwards.

I fly home today from Southampton so I must get off this laptop and go catch a train to the airport…byeeee.

The eternal comedy question arises.

When a woman walks on stage she knows that the majority of the audience are not convinced she is funny and has to hit them straight away with a joke to get them to relax and trust her, where as men are assumed funny the minute they walk on and hold a microphone, they are allowed their time to get into their stride.

Having been a stand up for ten years now, I realised I never had any female role models in comedy. There weren’t that many female Scottish comics around when I started out and wee Jimmy Krankie doesn’t count.

My hero’s of comedy were Jerry Sadowitz and Billy Connolly.
So my type of comedy was never female orientated, I was hard core right from the start.
I was told by promoters that I was too strong and scary, so I had to tone it down as no one wants to be over whelmed by a woman.
So I started talking about personal issues, my past and my own take on life. I don’t do gags, my comedy is more in the story telling style and connecting with an audience.

Dealing with hecklers can be a double edged sword coming from a female.

If you are too clever, the insults keep coming as a punter is determined to win the shout, or worse, if a man heckles and you put him down his girlfriend will snarl at you as she doesn’t get to speak to him like that…so why should you?

No one really likes a smart mouthed woman, not even other females!

Women can be political commentators, social observers and incredibly good satirists; we don’t all talk about tampons.

Female comics storm clubs up and down the UK regularly, though we do get accused of “Too much information about wombs” and “Please not the child birthing jokes”

Why aren’t we allowed to talk about such topics when men can bang on about masturbation till we all want to poke our eyes out with a blunt spoon?
Men can do whole sets about child birth, placenta and women’s toilet parts but even though this is our domain we are encouraged not to talk about it, leave it to the boys!

I love going onstage and talking about subjects that confound the stereo types of female comedy. I make jokes about murder, violence and gangsters. Trust me there is comedy material right there, you just have to use the language and timing to unfold a story properly and let the audience guide you to where the line cannot be crossed.
Usually with a good comedy audience, there is no line that can be crossed and laughter, tragedy and comedy can be explored and enjoyed with a bunch of strangers in a wee dark room.

Still being a woman in stand up has its downsides.
Many times I have gotten into conversations with cab drivers as they have dropped me off at clubs, on hearing that I am stand up comic they mostly say “I don’t like it when women swear and talk about sex, you don’t do that do you? That’s for the men to do” and I often sit there and muse on his words and say back to them “Shut up and drive the cab, I hate it when taxi drivers assume I am from the Victorian Era and my comedy act is based around my wonderful parlour skills, a ditty about my new hat and a song about a yellow canary”

Women can swear, get down and dirty, be sensitive, procrastinate, debate, joke and look honestly at life without being vulgar.
Comedy timing and the use of communication makes all the difference.

I never actually knew I was a female comedian till I went to London and they announced me as “She is a woman and from Scotland” I was just a stand up comic in Scotland my sex was never seen as an issue, barrier or hindrance.

We rarely see an all female line up in a mainstream comedy club; these nights are usually a novelty with the tag ‘Girls night’ as a feature.
Yet many comedy clubs regularly have four male comics on and the show isn’t presented as ‘Boys Night Out’, that’s just called a comedy gig.

Some clubs are still reticent about putting on more than two women on the same bill; maybe the smell of ovaries is too overwhelming for some audiences.

So yes women are funny, they have always been funny and we will raise the bar when it comes to talking about the stuff that matters. The boys can have the masturbation material, the childbirth and period jokes…I want to talk about how my mammy got a light bulb out of an Alsatians Dogs mouth by smacking it in the crotch with a snooker ball in her sock….its a funny story and there are no tampons in the punch line.

That’s exactly the kind of stuff I will be doing this coming week March 8th at Garage venue as part of the Glasgow Comedy Festival, do come along and say hi please?
Then on March 9th my daughter Ashley and I will be doing our sketch show called Square Street at Blackfriars in Glasgow.

“Auntie Janey, I can see the moon and the sun….look” pointed baby Abi as I walked her home in the late afternoon light.
“How can I see both?” she asked.

“Well it’s because the time of year and the light I think, I am not very sure Abi am sure Ashley will know because she is cleverer than me, so we will go ask her soon” I smiled.

Abi stopped walking and looked at me and said “But she’s just your baby, she can’t know more than you” the wee three year old toddler looked shocked that an adult would have to ask their child for an answer.

“Ashley isn’t a baby she is nearly 21 years old, that makes her an adult” I explained. She still looked confused so I got off the subject of explaining Ashley’s age.

“Ok then I will ask you, why do you think we can see the moon and the sun at the same time, you are a clever girl you tell me then?” I spoke to her wee open face and huge brown eyes.

Abi thought for a moment and looked up at the pale grey distant moon that was peeking out behind the clouds and then shifted her head to look at the late wintry sun on the other end of the sky and said “I can see both because they wanted me to see them and they came out so I would look at them”

I laughed out loud and agreed, the moon and the sun wanted Abi to look at them at the same time…she is right! Why would the world exist if a toddler couldn’t look at it?

I miss having a wee toddlers look on the world, it never stops making me laugh.

Sitting in the calmness of a wee coffee shop sipping a latte is great for me, no smoking cravings or anything, just me some coffee and a garibaldi biscuit.
That was until a glossy dark haired woman in a fancy leather jacket came over to me holding up a laminated card that said “I am from Romania, I am poor please give me money to feed my kids”
She had a designer handbag and smart heavy leather winter boots. I know this woman; she is always in and out of a big BMW car that cruises up and down the West End where I live. Then I recalled how I know her, she is part of the gang of beggars that work the west end and have been photographed and targeted as fraudsters.

She thrust the card under my nose again and looked at me with a nonchalant glance.

I stood up and shouted at the coffee counter staff “Excuse me are professional beggars supposed to be in here to annoy us” Remember I have Beggars and Thieves…
stopped smoking and am not easily negotiated at most times anyway.

The young waitress shook her head and pointed at the door.
At that moment a woman in a bright red head scarf sitting behind me said loudly “That’s awful, the woman is trying to feed her kids”

“Really?” I snapped “Outside is a BMW waiting to pick her and the other two girls that go round the shops and pubs begging, do you have a fucking BMW waiting on you outside?” I asked.

The Romanian woman butted in “It’s not a BMW it’s an old Mercedes”

“And she can fucking speak English, so the laminated card is defunct” I shouted.

The Romanian woman sneered and turned her back to me and carried on going round the café.

“Well” said the posh red scarved woman “Maybe she is forced to beg and the men are holding her hostage”

“Ok, you call the police then if you believe that” I shouted and saw the Romanian woman give me the finger then leave the café.

The red scarf woman, two waitresses’s and myself rushed to the window to see the Romanian woman get into a big blue Mercedes car and speed off, I stood smugly and pointed at them saying

“My niece lives on a minimum wage, she doesn’t claim benefits and for two days a week due to the low wages of her husband she cannot afford gas to heat her water, if she came in here with two wee Scottish babies and begged for gas money you would shout at her to go get a job, yet a well dressed Romanian manages to get her car repayments from a middle classed guilt ridden mung bean -salad - eating Lefty, aint the world fucked up?”

The people in the café pretended I wasn’t there and they all went back to drinking posh coffee as the Romanian Begging gang drove up further into the West End where posh people feel guilty enough to help fake beggars and poor Scottish people are scared to complain incase it looks like racism.

Last night I was dreaming that a huge tidal wave flooded my home and I was carried away on a giant gulf of water. The dream was so scary and I woke up terrified, then strangely when Ashley came into the living room she said “Mum I dreamt a Tsunami came and drowned us” that freaked me out, we both had the same dream. What does that mean? I don’t know.

Today I got ready and headed off to the Mitchell Theatre and did a talk on my autobiography. I was onstage with Ian Pattison, the famous Scottish writer; we were taking part in Aye Write –the Glasgow Writers Festival.

It was lovely to see people come along and chat about the book, I read some passages out and then they asked questions. I loved it.

I wish I had something more to tell you, but I have still kept off the fags and am grumpy and I think I may be eating my weight in chocolate.