Domestic Godley

Janey Godley certainly seems to have led a colourful life: she grew up in Glasgow’s deprived East End, married into a gangster family at the age of 18 and, now in her forties, she has outlived her own mother who was murdered at the age of 47.

Believe it or not, this makes for some good material. Godley’s depiction of 1960s sectarianism in Glasgow’s East End—“no, it doesn’t mean the fear of being a secretary”—is highly entertaining. An anecdote about her husband’s gangster relatives taking out a hit man on her Uncle is compelling – though Godley leaves it up to the audience to judge the truth of the tale.

Other parts of the show, however, draw less successfully from the more predictable topics of marriage and everyday domestic life. Godley jokes about her lack of cooking, cleaning and parenting skills to the point of being repetitive and her observations on the behavioural differences between men and women, whilst humorous, are not particularly original.

Yet Godley deserves praise for the friendly way in which she engages her audience, treating them all as members of an eccentric extended family. Perhaps the main problem for the younger audience members is that she begins half of her anecdotes saying “those of you who are over 40 out there will know this...” Whilst Godley’s skill as a comedian is obvious to all, there is much less in this show to enjoy for those of us who aren’t in this age bracket.