Through some miracle of Divine Providence, Scottish comedian Janey Godley (Jane Godley Currie Storrie, 1961-2024), most famous for greeting the 45th President of the United States to her country with a sign reading “Trump is a Cunt”, was born on January 20. In gratitude, she will be the only topic I choose to acknowledge or write about here today. Thanks, Eve Golden, for letting us know about Godley’s November 2 passing due to ovarian cancer. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.
Today is also Martin Luther King Day, and touching on that, there are ways in which Godley was also Ungodly. In 2021 she was dropped from a PSA campaign for Covid protocols as well as a pantomime production of Beauty and the Beast after some racist and ableist jokes she had made ten years earlier resurfaced. Godley was a working class Scottish woman whose act revolved around a brutally frank, unfiltered sensibility. In light of that, her digs at black American celebrities, and jokes about disabled people and victims of Chernobyl, while unfortunate, aren’t surprising. They were surprisingly dumb, though. Her public apologies were profuse and seemed genuine. Her cancer diagnosis came shortly afterwards.
Bad luck plagued Godley her entire life. The youngest of four children born to two alcoholic parents in Glasgow’s tough, crime ridden East End, she was repeatedly raped and abused by an uncle starting at age 5. Several of her friends died of heroin ODs. She believed her mother was murdered by a boyfriend, whom himself was later murdered. (Her mother drowned; the boyfriend was never charged). At age 19 she married Sean Storrie, the 16 year old Asperger’s-afflicted son of Glasgow gangster “Old George” Storrie. For 15 years they ran the Weavers Inn, a pub owned by the family. They managed to remain relatively aloof from the criminal side of the family’s activities, although on one occasion they were arrested when police discovered the pub was the hiding place for a large cache of weapons and explosives.
Godley found her way to comedy as the Weavers Inn’s charismatic bartender, and also from introducing acts that were presented as entertainment in the establishment. From being m.c. she went to being a full-fledged comedian in 1994. About a decade later, she began winning comedy awards, and getting spots on television. Her memoir, Handstands in the Dark, was published in 2005. Among Sturgeon’s biggest fans was the great Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister and Leader of the Scottish National Party from 2014 to 2023.
Godley’s stunt with the sign happened at Trump’s Turnberry Golf Course in 2016. (FYI, the Brits don’t have the same taboo against the C word that we do in the States). Photos of her holding that sign went viral all over the world, and were especially delicious because Trump’s own mother was Scottish, and golf is the national sport. In spite of all that, they STILL hate him there. I was never more proud to be a Scotsman in my life.
Godley’s daughter is comedian and actress Ashley Storrie.