Sorry I have been missing again, I have been travelling and you have no fucking idea how busy I have been but I must be disciplined and get my blog up to date. I am sitting in fancy flat in Chelsea waiting to go to Soho Theatre tonight for my opening night. I haven’t really decided what I am talking about, but the show is about my Blog …yes this thing that you are reading.
The flight down with husband was fun, I tried to sleep and luckily we got separated during the flight as the plane was so busy so I didn’t have to feel guilty about tuning into my IPod. Normally he gets grumpy if I prefer to listen to Steely Dan instead of him.
So we landed, we got into the flat, I changed and had to run to a photo shoot and interview with Easy living magazine. The hotel was in Cadogan Square in London and it was extremely posh, I mean seriously posh. I was wearing a green shirt and white linen trousers as it was so sunny. I imagined it would all be very low key, but when I got there –there was a make up artist, a famous photographer, an assistant to that famous photographer and a journalist. They got my face done and took me up to one the expensive bedrooms and asked me to lie down! I am not kidding the amount of camera and lighting equipment in that room made me think ‘finally I get to do a porn shoot!’
So there I was lying on a big posh bed with a crew standing round me staring at the images that were coming up on a big computer screen as one guy shouted “Come on Janey, smile, turn round, give me some leg action!” It was so funny.
No it wasn’t a porn shoot, just a very posh photo shoot for this Conde Naste magazine feature. Then we moved downstairs as I sat on the big plush carpet, I was instructed to move, smile, not smile as a make up girl fussed over my quickly disappearing lip gloss and annoyingly difficult hair.
It was really tiring, and then I had to sit and do the interview which will be featuring my book that goes to paperback in August.
By the time I got back to husband I was ready to drop. I had still yet to write the Nancy Del O’llio piece for BBC Radio 4 and compile an interview that I am doing on BBC Radio 4 with Jo Frost ‘The Supernanny’ from TV.
So this morning I got up, started writing and then went to see Monica’s new flat in Chelsea, she has problems with the windows as they are painted down, she was exploding with anger and shouting at the landlord, meanwhile husband took a screw driver to the painted fixtures and released the window and made Monica scream with happiness. See who needs builders? just get a Glaswegian with a screw driver and all windows will be prised!
So I am sitting here trying to work out what I will be saying at my opening night at the prestigious Soho theatre, wish me well please?

I started telling husband a thing that happened and he interrupted me by saying “You have told me this before”
Yes, so I had but there was more to it and I remembered some more details I wanted to add to it, but he stopped me in my stride. I like talking and he must secretly hate it, so I have decided not to tell him anything interesting again and the next time he repeats a story I will halt him and make him stop.
Believe me with his Aspergers Syndrome he fucking repeats everything twice daily, this will be fun. I hate him today. I was watching him when he wasn’t looking and everything he did annoyed me, even the way he blinked annoyed me, the way he rubbed his eyes, irritated me, when he sat and picked his nails made me want to throw petrol on him and set fire to his big aggravating awkward body. Maybe its me, I know I must be hard to live with, I am fucking full on at times. I know this as when other comics meet him the first thing they always say to him is “Man, how do you live with her?”
It’s as if I am some nutter, but there must be something about me as 8 out of 10 comics say this to him, I suppose its because I talk a lot, I really do, I need to stop talking soon.
Then again it’s what I get paid for, so husband is an ass.
I don’t know who to do anything else. Comedy/acting and writing is what I do. I can’t imagine being anyone else.
I think I will work till I die. My mate Monica is the same; I am so proud of her. She owns her own PR Company in London, she works 24/7 and has her own office/staff and works full on, and she is also a great talker!
She is Scottish as well and took on PR as a job to fill in till she decided what her route in life was and now she expanded and she is one of the biggest and most influential PR people representing Chef’s/restaurants in London!
If you ever need a table at any of London’s most upmarket restaurants – then Monica is the chick in the know!
We were chatting the other day about the hours and the madness that we do and we both decided that what we do we love but it is very consuming.
I told her that I was chatting to a woman on the plane from LA when I was flying home from New Zealand; this woman had two wee girls with her and her lovely husband. The lady told me that she was planning on two more kids.
I immediately said to her “Oh, my goodness, how the hell will you find time to work, if you have more kids?” I was genuinely sorry for her.
The woman looked at me shocked and smiled “I won’t have to work, my husband has a good job, we have a big house on the beach in LA and I will have kids and raise them, why would I want to work?”
My brain took about seventeen seconds to work out why that was a good thing.
Isn’t this what women want? I asked myself. Isn’t this the ultimate dream?
Could I imagine giving up my life to raise kids in a big beach house in LA and have my husband work for it all?
No- is the clear answer for me anyways. I know it sound like a dream come true, but I just cant and never did imagine never working and depending on a man to do it for me. What if he died? What if he fucked off and you never had any skills? What if you went mental making table centre pieces Martha Stewart stylee? What if you were allergic to pine cones and linen table napkins and the very thought of matching your curtains to your bread bin made you want to shoot squirrels?
What if you hated your kids and turned your life into the Ballad of Lucy Jordan? (That great Dr Hook song where the woman kills herself through her mind numbing experience of middle class, suburban life)
Now I know that this isn’t every woman’s view, this is mine, but I was shocked at the thought that I never even considered it as a life choice.
It may have been easier for me had I married a man with that in mind, but it never even came into my train of thought….EVER.
When I met husband I was only 18 and he was 16. His family were much richer than mine (fucksake the poorest cousins of church mice were richer than mine) yet I never thought once if I married him I wouldn’t have to work and he would provide. Not my style ever!
I have worked since I was 16; I got three days off to give birth in 1986 and was back at work the day I came home from the hospital. I can’t recall when I never worked, though now being a comic/writer person I only work late at night to go on stage. The rest of my days are lent to writing and organising, though my manager John Fleming has a harder job. He has to organise me, advise me, nag me into doing stuff and cajole me into being productive.

So there we have it, I married a man who hates me talking and yet it’s what I do for a living.
I may kill him (again) but at least if I do, I won’t have to worry about who is paying the bills, who will provide for us, who will make the decisions, who will keep me company….I do that all on my own.

Well I did warn her, she is like me and cannot drink much. Last night she went out clubbing and came home all bleary eyed. This morning when I went into see her, she was lying in her bed, all sprawled out looking like a murder victim, I am sure there was white chalk lined round her. She lifted her face up and her make up was all melted over her eyes, she looked like Gene Simmons from Kiss, except a toddler had applied the make up and rubbed it in with a woolly sock.
There were big black streaks running down her cheeks, her skin was beige and she was lying there with her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth the way dead dogs look after they have been hit with a car.
“Are you ok?” I asked stupidly.
“No mum, I have been sick on my Gameboy” she whispered.
I looked on the carpet and sure as fuck there was her wee Gameboy covered in sick.
“Oh dear, more vodka?” I laughed.
I walked out of the room that smelled like a homeless person’s jockstrap and went off to make myself tea.
I do feel sorry for her, like me she can only drink small amounts and then pukes.
So today I am off to clear my head as well, I have spent too many days doing nothing for my shows. I need to go write, my show opens at Soho Theatre in London next week.
Husband is being typically lazy, doing nothing and I mean nothing. It’s making me crazy. I got up this morning and the house is messy, he literally does nothing…he keeps saying he will get round to doing stuff this weekend, yet he still in his bed. Maybe I am being picky and need to lay off everyone and focus on getting my stuff ready for Edinburgh.
Or maybe that lazy fucker needs to get up and clean the place a bit.

I went to visit my old mate Betsy today. She is as mad as shit and so funny. Not only were her old drinking pals Tom and Stumpy standing at the door but they had a barky mental dog called Biter. I brought along my laptop in the hope that I may have got logged into some free broad band and YES it actually worked, so I was able to work and hang out with my old East End mates. Before it got to 3pm, they were all roaring drunk; the party was in full swing (I wasn’t, as I don’t really drink) and it was all getting a bit out of hand. I knew it was time to go when a hot pie was flung at the fireplace. They all started shouting at each other and at that moment a journalist called me, now trust me –Betsy, Tom and Stumpy don’t have the respect to stop screaming when a phone rings. I actually had to pretend to the guy that I was watching a Scottish violent film and would turn it down to hear him talk, what I actually did was run out of the house and take the call in the garden. That’s my life! On a funnier note, as Ashley and I were going through the film footage she shot in NZ, there is a small clip of me teasing some big rugby type blokes. I have a bit of banter with them and actually ask them if they are gay strippers. Turns out the guy I was chatting with is Ali Williams the top All Black Rugby guy! I saw pics of him on google with Prince William, and there was me and Ashley taking the piss out of him! You can see a wee clip of it on this link http://livedigital.com/content/423043/u1530 So check it out and you can see me ask him if his team mate is his ‘Brokeback mountain’ boyfriend! Speak soon…..

I have had people and journalists all week ask me why I tell all in my blogs. I think I have an inherent need to keep talking or I will die! Sometimes at home husband hardly speaks, he is very quiet. So I call mates and I call family and when I have exhausted them I go on stage and talk and when that avenue is done, I talk here. Maybe one day I will run out of words.
At least I get paid for it on stage! That helps!
Got my credit card bill in today and husband sat there with ‘that face’ on, you the face that makes shocked looks at every expenditure, fucks me off, I pay my own bills, but he does all the financial work for me.
“How much did you pay for a pair of jeans? You know you can get jeans for £4 at Tesco’s” He tells me solemnly.
“Yes, and you can have a wife who wears Tesco’s jeans, luckily you have me who doesn’t” I add.
“I wouldn’t mind a wife who wore Tesco’s own brand jeans, she would be nice anyway” He mumbles.
“Good, then go fucking find some cheap chav who wears cheap clothes” I smile back.
I mean my jeans were only £20, hardly fucking astronomical- I may stab him at dawn. He still shrieks at the price of Lycra tights “What £7 a pair of tights?”
If it were down to him Ashley and I would be wearing wooden clogs that we carved out each time our feet got bigger or he would have paint to change the colour of the clogs if we fancied something different.
Left to him we would be eating shit spam and chips.
I live in nice places and eat good food and wear lovely clothes, he forgets I was the child who wore torn and dirty clothes.
I had filthy underwear and shabby shoes as a child, I lived in a dirty house that was infested with fleas and often had to pick lice from my hair. I once had scabies and had to paint my naked body in a foul smelling chemicals and stand naked till it dried, the sheets on my bed had to be burned and I slept with an old coat the rest of that winter.
The smell still haunts me. I still dream about the filthy toilet and sometimes clean it in my dreams! I cannot stand bad smells or untidy places. I clean pub tables before I sit at them, I wipe cutlery in restaurants before I eat.
I am not going back to being poor. I may die skint, but whilst I am alive, it has to be decent accommodation with clean bed linen and at least four star hotels. Nothing less will do.
People mistake it for snobbery or class obsessed, but it has to do with maintaining my own standards.
You would be surprised the amount of comedy bookers who assume you will ‘stay over’ at their flat when doing their gig to avoid costs!
I need to be booked into a good hotel, have my own privacy and not have to sleep in someone’s bed!
When I was a child, I remember going to other girl’s houses and being amazed at how clean they were, I would envy the drawers full of clean pants and socks that lined them. The fresh cotton smell, the tidy rooms with clean bed linen, the books lined up on white shelves, the fresh food and non shouty sober parents that served hot soup, all stunned me and made me eternally jealous.
I recall vowing to myself that when I was older I would never live dirty again, I would never watch my child picking lice, and I would never again eat leftover chips that drunks dropped in the street.
I haven’t and that’s how it’s going to stay.
I am so glad Ashley has never had to suffer any of the above indignities, she has had a very privileged life in comparison but she does know what I went through and does appreciate every penny spent on her.
So I am not going to wear £4 jeans, fuck off and find some grateful whore who will dear husband coz it aint me.