“OH darling. I don’t write the show, I just make it all up as I get on.”
That was Janey Godley’s response when asked if writing for her ongoing tour – Not Dead Yet – had helped her to cope with her cancer diagnosis.
The Scots comedian, who shot to prominence during the Covid pandemic for her tongue-in-cheek voiceovers of the First Minister, has had a public battle with the disease since she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in late 2021.
After a hysterectomy and intense chemotherapy that saw the loss of her recognisable long hair, Godley went on a course of PARP inhibitors to prevent the cancer coming back. It didn’t work. Instead, she was diagnosed with “pernicious and persistent” peritoneal cancer, which occurs in the thin layer of tissue lining the inside of the abdomen.
“Peritoneal cancer is definitely not survivable, so I was given some very bad news,” Godley told The Sunday National. “It will come back and it will keep coming back until it kills me.”
But, the comic says, being on tour again has done her a “world of good”, bringing a sense of normality back to a life which had been upended.
“I am loving being on tour, it’s been the best feeling. It’s been the first time in a year and a half where I’ve felt fucking normal. I don’t have to talk about haemoglobin. I don’t have to pick yet another plaster off my arm.
“I’ve been high as a kite coming back from the gigs. Even though I’m knackered I’m back at 12 o’clock at night and the wee dug is running all over the place excited and my husband’s got my dinner on and we’re all back to normal.”
3000 people cheering me on at Glasgow SEC is better than any medicine - thank you everyone #SoldOutShow #notdeadyet pic.twitter.com/V0fC3Znl45
— Janey Godley (@JaneyGodley) March 9, 2023
Godley is full of praise for the staff and specialists at the Beatson Cancer Centre in Glasgow, but says regular visits to the clinic have taken a toll on her mental health.
“You see people go by in wheelchairs, they’re really frail with their bald head and pale skin, and … you see your own future. It just makes you put your head down. I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to have this, I don’t want this to be my daily life, and then you have to just get through it, get up, get your clothes on, and get on stage and get it all out again.
“You have to just think, you know what’s going to be me, me on stage, that’s what’s going to be me, me on tour.”
And though Godley’s Not Dead Yet tour has been billed as her final one, with her peritoneal cancer currently in remission, she is upbeat and not writing off another round entirely.
“If I keep getting this at bay, who knows. Should I celebrate it by going on another tour and saying ‘I’m still here’?”
And Godley is lucky not to be on tour alone. Her daughter Ashley Storrie – "an award-winning stand-up in her own right” – is with her every step of the way.
Happy #InternationalWomansDay2023 to my wonderful lassie Ashley - she makes me proud and has had a tough year with my cancer diagnosis but rocked the tour (and still is- see you soon London) she’s the best. pic.twitter.com/ReNCqDw18Q
— Janey Godley (@JaneyGodley) March 8, 2023
“It’s brilliant [having Storrie there],” Godley says. “I’m not sitting backstage myself, I’m not on the road myself. She’s moaning because everytime we share a hotel I’m snoring, but it’s good fun.
“I think we’re both very aware that we’re enjoying every single bit of time that we have left together.”
But Storrie is more than offstage support or – as she quips in her set – the daughter of a proud parent wheeled out to sing On The Good Ship Lollipop at Christmas-time. Her set equally has the audience in fits.
Ironically enough though, the pair did sing. Godley’s was probably the only comedy show I’ll ever see which ended with a mother-daughter duet and about half the audience in tears.
But the poignance of it is clear, especially given how Godley’s says her own mother – Annie Currie – was murdered by a man when she was just 21. A victim of child abuse herself at the hand of her uncle David Percy, the crimes of men have severely impacted on Godley’s life.
But Godley has come past it in strength, with a fiercely feminist take on the world that diffuses her show. It is equally political, opening with a potshot at Michelle Mone and taking aim at a string of other politicians throughout her time on stage.
However, Godley says her interest in the latest political tides has waned, and she is not backing any horse in the ongoing SNP leadership race – a party she has supported in the past.
Instead, she is focusing on her health, her tour, and her family. So much so that Godley has family with her even during the interview. I find that out half-way through, after her husband Sean interrupts to say that “mini-chemo” is an accurate enough way of describing her upcoming course of treatment.
But the comic is worried about what will happen to her husband and daughter once her cancer diagnosis reaches its now inevitable conclusion.
“I’ve got to be mindful that it’s not me that’ll suffer, it's my family,” she tells The Sunday National. “If I die it’s them that are left behind. It’s my husband and my daughter that’s going to be in more pain than I will ever be.
“I would rather I die, because I couldn’t bear being alive knowing that he died or she died. So in a sense, as the deck has fallen, I’ve actually got the best hand.”
The Sunday National attended Godley’s Not Dead Yet tour at the Albert Halls in Stirling on February 25 and spoke to her the following week. While the Scottish leg of the tour is finished, there are dates coming up in London and Belfast.
