Owl Man is here!

So tonight for the first time, Glasgow Jongleurs was NO smoking…!
I have stopped so it was easy for me (well so far...one day stoppage does not an expert make).
Anyway the crowd were lovely and laughed along fine until I mentioned my funny exchange with Owl Man, for those who have read that blog from last week; Owl Man was the bloke who was stood outside a shopping centre with his collection of woodland owls and birds of prey.
I was telling the audience how he was marching around with a big leather gauntlet on shouting “Does anyone want to stroke a hawk” the absurdity of this situation made me piss myself laughing, so I told the audience and one crowd screamed and pointed to this man sitting at the end of their table, one woman shouted “Its him, he is owl man”
I stopped in mid sentence and asked him “Are you that strange man with the owls and collection of woodland birds”
“Yes” He replied…Owl man was in the house!
“How many birds do you have” I asked him as the audience all stared at him.
“30 owls and fourteen various birds of prey” He smartly and proudly answered.
“Ok, don’t you think you should just let them all go free?” I asked as the audience cheered.
“No, they are all hand raised” He replied.
“Yes, but not by fucking accident, you bred wee owls and birds and keep them tethered to posts” I got annoyed.
“They are entertainers!” he answered.
“Just because something is nailed to a bit of wood doesn’t make it entertainment, Terry Waite the hostage who was tied to a radiator wasn’t an entertainer, Jesus was nailed to a cross but no one shouted up to him ‘Hey Jesus do that funny dance you normally do’ did they? Come on let them all go free” I laughed.
“Well, it is good to let inner city kids see Owls and Hawks, they may have never seen an owl or hawk” he argued.
“Listen mate I know inner city kids who have never seen balsamic vinegar or avocados, but I don’t stand outside shopping malls shoving them into their faces” I added.
The audience was laughing, the guy was laughing I wasn’t being as argumentative as this blog suggests, then it came to me and I stopped and laughed and asked him seriously “Listen mate, imagine you were having the most amazing blow job and right at the perfect moment your phone rang and someone shouted down the line ‘Keith, there has been a eagle spotted at the end of your street sitting beside a dead cat, go quick and get it’ would you jump out of the bed and run after an eagle with your professional bird catching equipment or would you sit back and enjoy the blow job” The whole crowd laughed loudly as Owl man debated this….
I even got the whole crowd to go ‘Whoo whoo’ like an owl and asked him if it made him horny…honestly it was so funny-can you believe I met owl man?
So tonight I have stopped smoking for one whole day and it feels so good, no numb limbs, no ear pain and that fucking smoking ban will never annoy me!

Strange Man in the street…

I walked to the shops today; Glasgow was bright but very cold. We even had a partial eclipse of the sun today and I partially missed it! I looked up and tried not to burn my eyes, saw something in the sky….could have been big fat pigeon blocking the sun am not sure but I felt I should mention it.
Anyway, I managed to record my second Live Blog today and you can check it out on Livedigital.com just go to the home page and put my name in- Janey Godley and it will take you to my video’s and media sorry I had to make you work for it -as some of these blog pages don’t support a link!
So there I was walking to the shops and I saw a man coming towards me, he made eye contact and smiled, I smiled and walked on.
Then I felt a hand on my shoulder and I turned quickly to face the guy I had just passed.
“Janey?” He asked.
“Sorry. Do I know you?” I replied.
“Yes, we went to school together, I am Steven; I was your date for the dance in 1977” he smiled.
I felt my heart stop…I did recall him, Holy Crap I used to have a big crush on him when I was 16, and there stood this old man with a baldy head, big fat stomach, sagging jaw line and grey bristly beard!
I smiled and looked past him at the big furniture shop and saw my own reflection in the window.
I had a scruffy pony tail in my hair, half of it falling out and blowing over my face, my combat trousers looked like they were fighting with my fat arse and with no make up on I looked like his mother.
“You look great” He said (liar) “Listen I saw you on TV and told everyone that I used to go out with you” he added.
“Actually we didn’t go out together you were never my boyfriend” I answered.
“We did” He insisted.
“Listen…nice to meet you again, I need to go I am very old and mental and have seventeen cats to feed” I lied and ran off.
What a bastard, but boy did that bring it all home to me.
I can’t believe I am middle aged, I never saw it in me until I saw it in him.
He was gorgeous back in the 1970’s. Tall, slim and with thick dark hair and moody blue eyes, he didn’t actually like me back then and took me to the dance and then told me it was because he did it for a bet.
I had spent a whole week terribly excited back then at the prospect that he fancied me and was horribly crushed when he laughed at me…..sounds like a scene from then horror film ‘Carrie’ except I wasn’t capable of sticking a stiletto into his forehead and throwing pots of blood around! If only!
I am sure when he saw me again he was glad he never really did fancy me, fuck I look old and scraggy.
I really need to re think my wardrobe, I need to put in make up and maybe comb the crazy fuck off hair before I leave the house….just in case George Clooney is looking for me, you never know.

My Blog Live!

I am thinking about trying to do my three week-one hour nightly show at the Edinburgh Fringe to stream live on the web?
It means I will need to find somewhere to host it, but it also means people from all over the globe can sit at home and watch an Edinburgh Fringe show live in their house!
Other than that piece of innovative thinking, I have been doing nothing but paperwork and trying to get organised.
I am so lazy one minute and thinking so many things the next.
Ashley is the devil incarnate just now, what the fuck is wrong with my 19 year old? She wakes up and is actually the scariest fucker in the world….it takes her hours to be normal and even tempered. When she was a toddler, she was the happiest wee girl in the world; she used to actually wake up singing!
Now she is like Myra Hindley the child killer on crack. I may have to kill her and pretend she has run away.
Glasgow went ‘No Smoking’ on Sunday and all the streets are lined with people standing outside bars smoking in the freezing cold! That’s all we need…really angry Scottish people, the heart disease rate has gone down but people are stabbing each other in fury!
I haven’t been out to a bar or café yet so I have no idea how people are coping.
The law states that you cannot smoke indoors in any public building…I think publicans will build wee out-houses with gas heaters to stop the smokers getting pneumonia, they may never get cancer but they will get hypothermia!
So it is Tuesday and Ashley and I have been writing sketches for our show at the Fringe and its been fun, she really can make me laugh (but not in the mornings).
Husband meanwhile is planning on faking his own death and running away as we both are very volatile performers and he is Aspergers man with no imagination, yet seems to think it is ok to interrupt our flow of creativity to say something really fucking obscure that no audience will ever understand UNLESS they have Autism or Aspergers! Maybe he can do his own show
“My opinion on Barbed wire, unleavened bread, Lawrence of Arabia and films about Religion”
Because he can talk for hours on these subjects, I am serious; this man natters on about the most unbelievable mundane, uninteresting subjects and knows fucking shed loads of shit about them.
It must be hard being him -caught in the cross fire of two very sharp minded, fast talking, quick thinking females who can talk for Scotland.

Last Night Show…

The venue was heaving with people; Bar Bluu on Glasgow’s Trongate was the bar my one woman show was being held last night.
Downstairs Ashley had set up the camera and my mate Rob was coming along to make sure the filming went ok, as Ashley was doing her karaoke gig elsewhere.
There were too many people not enough seats, so I managed to get the restaurant upstairs to bring down some more seats and get everyone comfortable for the show.
The gig sold out and some people had to be turned away as we had no more room to let them in.
There was a lovely couple in their 70’s who came along to celebrate their 50 years of marriage! Their family asked them what they wanted for a gift and they asked to come see my show! How amazing is that?
So they sat in the front and we had a great laugh with them what a cool couple they were, so open minded and up for a laugh.
I did about two hours on stage, I really loved it and the show went so well, most of the stuff was unscripted some of the shorter bits I had done before, but generally it was a whole new show!
I have the film and am having it edited tonight, it will have clips go on livedigital alongside my other downloads and photos, they host it for me and it’s so cool, such a great site to be honest.
I am on BBC Radio 5 live on Monday night talking about this blog as my new show is Janey Godley’s Blog Live! and it goes to Soho Theatre before it goes to Edinburgh Fringe.
So tonight I am chilling out as its Mothers Day and I am having a rest.

Sex, drugs and Dogs…

Everyone believes that working in comedy and entertainment is full of fun and sexy nights and drug fuelled parties, well its not.
BUT…last night on the Glasgow Comedy Pub Crawl we did almost have all three.
Firstly there was THE SEXIEST man alive there; he was tall, dark, with that square jawed look, that firm toned body and the most amazing expressive blue eyes I ever saw on any man ever. To top it all he is actually Swedish and a doctor! I went over to his table to chat and as I was doing this my daughter Ashley clocked me and stood behind me, japing me, she was doing a whole coy act, playing with her hair and being all girly. I thought the guy was smiling at me but he was actually laughing at my daughter behind me all the while. Ashley was there to film me on her brand new camera and tripod.
I can’t believe she took the piss out of me and really made me look a fucking stalky old nutter drooling over the cutest man in Glasgow…but she did.
Then I had to go on stage and do a set that entails me not swearing to camera. It felt so odd, it was like wearing the wrong shoes, the wrong teeth and struggling to speak in Dutch….all the while looking at the sexiest man staring at me whilst my daughter was giggling at me behind a camera.
After we left the first bar, we made it along the road to following pub to set up the pub crawl comedy night.
I was walking slowly behind, lost in my own thoughts and was approached by the strange looking, scruffily dressed woman. She had a big gangly, shaggy black dog on an orange rope with her. The dog looked as if it wanted to go North as she was heading South, it actually looked embarrassed to be with her, if that dog could talk it would have said “Fuck off scary old woman and let me go stay with people who don’t eat their own snot”
The woman came over to me, her dog looked away averting my eyes and she grabbed my sleeve shouting “Missus, can you give me five pounds and I will give you a wee bit of hash?”
I looked into her grubby hand and she was holding a small lump of cannabis.
“No thanks, I don’t want any drugs” I looked down and patted her dogs head; it wagged its tail very slowly and raised its head and sheepishly looked at me with big brown soft eyes.
“He is called Mesopotamia” she slurred. That surprised me, she knew a big fucking word!
I really wanted the dog, I would have given her a fiver for that big woolly dog, but the thought of dragging a big dog to a comedy gig put me off. Then the thought of taking it home to a bemused husband who won’t let me keep animals also put me off.
I carried on for the rest of the night getting on and off stage in various bars all the while thinking constantly about that big dog.
I wish I had a pet.
When I got home, my daughter asked me how the rest of my night went as she went off home after the first set in the first pub.
“Mum did you tell dad about that sexy man you were drooling over?”
Husband smiled at me, I winked and Ashley said “Dad, he was so gorgeous and mum was so shameful trying to sexually assault him during the gig”
I looked at her and laughed out loud and replied “When you left he gave me his number, he snogged me in the street and told me in his Swedish accent that I am the sexiest woman he has ever met”
Ashley screamed and said “Did you really kiss him in the street?”
“No, not really I met a junkie and a cool dog called Mesopotamia”

Mother’s day approaches…

As we all know that commercial vehicle ‘Mothers Day’ arrives in UK 26th March. I have a wonderful step mum called Mary, she is adorable and I am proud to have her as a mother and dedicated my autobiography to her (amongst other women in my family).
My real birth mother was murdered in 1982, so today I was thinking about her and thought I would tell you some funny stuff about her, she was called ‘Annie’.
Annie was slim, dark eyed and very funny (wonder where I got that funny thing from eh?)
She had a hard life, looked after her younger brother and sister before she got married and promptly had four kids to my father.
My ‘mammy’ as I call her was a great story teller and could also dance better than anyone I have ever seen in real life, this was a woman who could make soup and jive and manage to boot a snarling Alsatian out of the way as she quick stepped around a small dirty kitchen in Glasgow’s east End.
My mammy was scared of our dog, in fact she was scared of all dogs, yet we owned a biting angry dog called Major. He never bit mammy, and they had a truce between them-she fed him and he stayed out of her way.
I used to sit and stroke him and would beg my mammy to give him some affection, but Major eyed her nervously and she spit angrily that he would never get any comfort from her and this annoyed me, as Major was my love and my everlasting hero.
I was sexually abused by my mammy’s brother David and Major would attack him every time the man entered our home, the dog suffered beatings for his disobedience, yet he never gave up biting the paedophile…that’s why I loved my dog.
Anyway I recall one night when my mammy was sitting with her wee pal having a drink and good old Glasgow gossip. I sat there with them and there was knock at the door, I jumped up, went down the hallway, shoved the barking dog out of the way and answered the door.
To my absolute horror it was an Electricity Board worker carrying a small step ladder, telling me he was there to cut off our supply for failure of payment. I had made the awful error of letting him into our hallway.
I heard a commotion in the living room and the man came through as he followed me in to our dirty house.
What I witnessed will never leave me till this day…in the time it took for me to answer the door-my mammy had pulled down the couch/sofa bed, hopped into it, raised her knees beneath the dirty covers, her mate was rubbing her head and shouting to the young guy “Quick, she is having a baby, go boil water and grab her hand”
Then my Mammy, in her best Norma Desmond school of acting method screamed “Son, if you need to cut off our electricity, go ahead, I don’t want you in trouble son, you do what you need top do” And then she screamed “That’s another contraction Carole AAARRGGGHHH!”
The dog and I just stood there aghast at the whole debacle, I was only twelve years old, I really thought she was having a baby! I was unaware this was her ruse to get shot of the electricity man off the premises without disconnecting our unpaid supply.
Well the young guy ran out of our house in shock, he never stopped to cut us off and within seconds my mammy and her mate were back at the wee two bar electric heater smoking fags and continuing their chat.
That’s what I remember about my mammy, her sheer steely faced determination and funny improvised ways that got her in and out of trouble.
I just wish she could have wiggled her way out of being killed by that bastard boyfriend she trusted all those years ago.
She ended up drowned in the River Clyde, we found her days after she disappeared, I still to this day don’t know the actual day or the real facts behind her death.
Happy Mothers Day Annie.

My Blog went live today!

You can check my first ever live video blog by clicking the title above.


Ashley and I sat down and taped it and uploaded it today, she is a whiz with the laptop and multi media stuff, and meanwhile I am still getting to grips with working the timer on my oven.
I have been doing nothing but arguing for the past two days with husband, he is plotting his getaway I am sure. As soon as Ashley and I go to New Zealand in May, he will pack a bag; change his identity and slope off to Monaco to marry a sweet woman who has tidy hair and no temper.
She will be tall, slender and have long glossy smooth hair that swings as she walks, she will love country music, never grow a moustache, have no stretch marks and share his aspergic obsession of binary numbers. She will sit and gaze for hours into his eyes and be amazed at his knowledge of World War 2 movies and his strange interest in bull dog clips and barbed wire (trust me he knows lots about that stuff, coz he is really a borg from planet Zhirro).
She will giggle as he tells her that fucked up boring story about the tortoise he once saw choke on a peanut in 1982. She will love the fact he likes sex when you are trying to concentrate on life changing decisions, and kiss you hard when his bristly beard leaves a scaly like rash.
I am sure she will squeal with delight when he hugs her and then manages to try to pinch that bit of fat round her middle, coz he loves doing that.
She will be lucky and I will be sad he left me.
I may have to find a young blind man to love me.
Maybe I can stop being bitchy, or maybe not.
By the way I got an email from a cool guy in Prague who sent me his new email address, I replied but the address is wrong so if mccorrisken is reading this email me again please? Janey@janeygodley.co.uk

BBC Radio show…

My initial feelings this morning were ‘Don’t wake up’ but I managed to drag my ass out of bed and onto a train to Edinburgh to take part in radio café, a BBC Scotland show. The producer had been along to the Drumchapel workshops and had previously interviewed the kids I had been working with in the ‘Comedy with Confidence’ course.
My daughter Ashley had also been there that day and had made a presentation about being a stand up when she was 11 years old, to help encourage the teenagers with their performance. The show was really well done and to hear my daughter speak well and informative was heart warming, she never even rehearsed her speech and it was very well done, I am so proud.
The BBC loved the piece and has asked Ashley and I to make a recordable blog for broadcast from our trip together in New Zealand! I am well chuffed. They said we work well together, well they never saw her at two years old refusing to use a potty or at three trying to pull out my eyelashes as I slept. We work well now I suppose.
I am very proud of her and still can’t believe that funny girl is mine.
The train journey home was cool; I walked to the train station and took in the absolute beauty that is Edinburgh. During the Edinburgh Festival, I never really get time to enjoy the city, am always stressed about audience numbers, reviews and general performance stress. This time I looked around at the awesome buildings that dominate the city scape, that huge lumbering castle that stands high on the rocks above the train station, the Scott Monument that pokes the skyline with its jagged architecture and let my eyes take in the green mossy giant that is Arthur’s seat.
It really is the most beautiful of sights and I can see why people come from all over the world to visit the city. We Scots do take it for granted; we have buildings there, and buildings that I have performed in, in that city that are actually older than America! Beat that!
I love Edinburgh, I am proud of Scotland, we don’t all deep fry chocolate bars, we don’t all take heroin and we are not all alcoholics’.
Just some of us….mostly people I know…but we are not all mad nutters.

I am not pregnant!....

Ovaries remain unfertilised, womb is as barren as an empty waste paper basket and I am the happiest woman alive. I really need to sort out my ‘I think I am pregnant’ situation as I worry monthly, I will not use any invasive birth control that involves drugs or surgery, yet I get scared I am fertile and am carrying evil twins every month.
So it continues.
I did a gig last night for Glasgow Comedy festival at O’Neills on Sauchiehall Street, the crowd were chatty and in good numbers, I love live comedy.
I told them all about the ‘Owl man’ I had met during the day and they all agreed that any man who wears a green gillet, big glove and has an obsession about owls, is a man who has never has a blow job in his life. The minute that guy gets regular sex those wild birds are being thrown into mid air.
I was still laughing at the vision of that wee tiny child almost being dragged away by a big flapping owl…it must have looked like a big mouse to the bird, it tried to fly off to the woods and peck the eyes out of the girl as she stood there waiting on her photo being taken by the scary owl man. Who on earth wants a picture of their child with a flapping owl on her wrist? Weird folk is the answer to that.
“Here is a picture of our Chantalle with an owl” the deranged mother would brag as she flipped the picture out of her handbag.
I have slept most of the day being lazy and tired but was mightily cheered up to discover my website and blog were featured into the ‘Guardian Guide’ yesterday here in the UK. My blog is the focus of my new show this year at Soho Theatre and Edinburgh Fringe Show.
So I am off to enjoy the rest of my Sunday as tomorrow I am off to Edinburgh to be interviewed for a Radio show, I will download it when it has been broadcast and let you hear it if you want.

The Owl and the Book…

I went up into Easterhouse (rundown area of Glasgow), it has a brand new huge shopping park. I was doing a book signing/comedy gig there at the Borders Book Store. As I approached the store I saw a small crowd outside, I thought “Maybe people are queuing up?” But no it was in fact an exhibition of wild owls. Yes OWLS…you read it correct. I was about to go into to my event and a big owl flapped at me and almost poked my funny hair. It was tethered at the leg (in case it decided Easterhouse was shite and the woods were more interesting, I mean to be honest what would an owl want with a shopping complex?) There was a man in a green gillet strapping the bored tired owls onto the wrists of small kids (one owl was so big I thought it could take off and drag the small child away as prey) the man then took photographs of the child holding an owl.
I was mesmerised by this strange display and felt so sorry for the bored looking exquisitely beautiful birds.
Anyway I went into the venue and took up my place at the microphone and there in front of me were about thirty people and 6 small kids…
Great…I got one of the wee boys up and asked him “who are you here with?”
“My granddad” he answered.
“Did you get to hold an owl?” I asked, pointing outside the big glass window to the owl man and his tethered birds.

“No my granddad says they are biting bastards, and if I want to get close to an owl he will take me up the bluebell woods and we wont have to pay a fucking weirdo to take photos of me holding it” the wee innocent boy with big blue eyes clearly spoke.
My audience howled with laughter, the granddad blushed and I said “You know what? I think you granddad is right”
I got other kids up for a chat and they were so funny, I joked with the audience and sold some books.
I love kids, especially Glasgow kids!

Mini Disc Hell…

I have loads of Sony mini discs with shows I recorded onto them , loads of live shows and I thought this was up to the minute technology, turns out that the mini discs cannot be uploaded onto my pc as they can only be listened to, the Sony Sonic Stage software people called me today after my extensive problems, they told me the news that the mini discs are useless to upload, I even found a big petition on the web to Sony as it is them that will not develop the software to allow us to utilise our recorded data.
So therefore I have full shows on mini discs that can never be broadcast. I fucking hate Sony, I was going to upload some of my shows onto LIVEDIGITAL alongside my videos, but no can do.
So I will have to find a corrupt way of doing it, for I shall not be beaten!

I am slowly getting over my cold/flu; I did the Glasgow Comedy Festival Pub Crawl last night. The flu was making me shiver as I dragged my sorry ass from bar to bar with a cheery and fucking awesome crowd. I had to do comedy standing on a small table in one bar and in another bar I decided to pretend I was ‘special needs’. I watched all these nice people make sympathetic faces as I rambled on, my pub crawl people knew I was ‘in character’ and we laughed so much, you have no idea how much shit you can get away with if you have learning problems. I know this will evoke anger and annoyance in some people but I play this character in a sketch show, so I was just taking the character to new areas of comedy.
Today I have stopped coughing and peeing and am patiently waiting on my period arriving….if that fails to show…I will throw myself of the highest building in Glasgow.
Pregnancy is neither desired nor fucking convenient right now; if I cannot download my shows I am not downloading a baby….that’s official.
My software will not allow it, and I am staying away from hardware in case I have this scary situation again…I am too old and too busy to be dealing with this…where the fuck is the control/alt/delete button on my ovaries?

I am sneezing snot…

I sneezed and snot flew all over my pc screen. There were big streaks of it and it looked like the map of Norway. I want to die…I cannot believe how fucked and miserable this virus is making me. I was on BBC Radio 7 today, I tried to not cough and sneeze or pee…it was horrid. I finally managed to get through the whole show without making a big ass of myself.
I went for a coffee after the show and sat in my local bar chatting with some of my old mates. My hair looked like I had been brushed backwards by an angry special needs person and I have a red nose that makes me look like a special needs person.
Life is getting a bit hectic but I am on top of most of it, I have almost got the posters organised for NZ and need to get the ones done for Edinburgh Fringe.
Are there any poster designers out there?
There is so much more to be done and I have just organised a short run at the prestigious Soho Theatre in London’s West End. They called me yesterday to offer me the slot and now I have some of that organised. Thanks to the wonderful John Fleming ( guy who helps me daily with PR and TV ideas and is currently trying to join a witness protection scheme to get away from me as I slowly turn into devils spawn!).
I have a temperature and the nasty sticky feeling down my back is making me heave.
I am getting some rehearsal space organised for my play and the sketch show that Ashley and I are planning.
I am sorry I am grumpy this past week but when my period arrives and the flu fucks off…I will be as happy as H R Puffinstuff!

The Flu…

Ok I have been writing very little lately as I have the flu…hoping its not the fucking bird flu to be honest, so far no feathers have popped outta my ass when I sneeze so that’s a good sign.
I coughed so much yesterday that I pissed a little bit in my knickers…that is the fucking end of my life right there…I am now addicted to those exercises that strengthen your bladder and vagina, I swear to God my vag will resemble a bulldog clip by the end of the month, I will be able to pick up petit pois with my pussy and be the envy of every woman on this block. I never want to ever cough and piss ever again. It’s not a good thing.
I have also turned into the evil woman from hell, husband is shit scared of me as I have dragged every single bad thing he ever did since 1979 and threw it into his face. My sister called today and I couldn’t talk to her coz I was stuck in 1983 and couldn’t concentrate on her chatter and maintain the arguement about the day my husband called me a cunt in front of people whilst Wham! was on the jukebox and Prince Andrew was bragging about his spell as a fighter pilot in the Falklands.
I need to stop going over the past, husband is considering separation and I am desperately trying to recall what I was wearing the day he threw coffee over me when Princess Diana gave birth to Harry and Frankie goes to Hollywood was number one. Maybe when my period arrives on Thursday I will be a nicer person or maybe I will throw hot coffee over him and sing my favourite song?
I am off to be nice, my daughter is buying a straight jacket from Ebay.

Human League is awesome…

I attended a private party on Saturday. A 40th birthday was being celebrated and 80’s pop giants Human League were the stars of the show. I got up and did some stand up before they came on, I could see many confused people looking at the stage saying “The bloke from Human League has got long hair and looks like a wee fat woman”
The crowd were really not expecting me on to be honest and I performed throughout the dessert part of the meal, but it did go fine and to say I shared a stage with Human League was awesome.
The party was held in a huge ware house in Darlington; it was all lit up and made very swish. We had chauffer driven cars to take the party goers to and from the hotel. It was really nice and I had a great time. I will load up some pics soon.
The journey by train was tedious getting home; snow is beating the countryside again.
So here I am home again, waiting for the next train ride/car journey/flight…

Fun in London

…
I have never been to the Café Royal in London’s West End before. I was amazed at how swish and regal it looked, it’s not the kind of café where you can order egg and chips, that’s for sure.
When I arrived at the venue to take part in ‘Funny Women’ I was escorted into the dressing room where young women were organising hair and make up.
Immediately my hand reached up and my fingers got trapped in the thick hedge like matted bush that is my hair.
A young blonde with cropped hair and a whippets body caught my eye “You need your hair done, come sit here and we can negotiate a way to have it in an up-do”
Within minutes she was pulling extremely hot straighteners through it and then twists were happening, Kirby grips were being whipped out of teeth and jabbed into my scalp whilst other women watched in awe.
The blonde was ‘taking on my hair’ the way other people took on ‘Kilimanjaro’’ I could not see what was happening as I never had a mirror in front of me, but heads were being nodded, smiles and raised eyebrows all around as yet another section of hair was twisted and piled on top of my hair, then secured with a sharp pin. I suspect this is as close to S&M that posh women get.
Then a flourish of hairspray was added, people smiled, some clapped and I stared into the mirror and saw coils of dark smooth hair arranged over the crown of my head, it looked interesting but to touch it was crispy and concrete-like. I think the hairspray was made of wall paper paste!
So I took my new ‘look’ and let the make up girl apply her goods.
Everyone did a double take on me “Janey you look lovely” now the thing is, I do dress up a lot and can do glam-but not for stand up comedy!
It was weird being on stage dressed up, I felt like a funny hooker.
The night was great, everyone did very well and it took ages to get the stuff out of my head,
I think if cracks should appear in your walls, spray them with hairspray, trust me it will hold them in place.

My Book has been re-printed again...

I am off to London tomorrow to take part in ‘Funny Women’ show at Café Royal in London’s city centre. I asked Random House to supply some books to sell at the venue but I just found out my book ‘Handstands in the Dark’ has sold out…again!
I am well chuffed.
Today I went into town to take back a bra I bought yesterday, something strange is happening to my body, I have lost weight around my ribcage area but my cup size has gone up…like I need bigger boobs! Please -I am now 36E that is evil…I am too small to carry those jugs.
I have packed my bag, am off to shave my legs (I have hairy-ness akin to a Brazilian footballers legs, I swear to God if I run the hairs trail behind like bicycle streamers).
I am also considering moving to London for three months in September, nothing really happens here in Scotland and I do need to stay down there to maximise on my career. This worries me slightly as I don’t want to uproot my family, my daughter is at Uni in Scotland and husband will not want to move away from her for that length of time….so I have a lot to consider.
Meanwhile if anyone reading this has a cheap flat for a short let, do let me know, though the great people at Crown Lawn are looking after me and they are the best possible people. I just feel that I may need something cheaper…
I am hoping this will be my year. If not? Then nothing ventured nothing gained, I don’t want to die and wish I had taken some chances.

Sex and Lies…

Husband knew I was stressed, just off a train from Manchester last night, where some fucked up Glaswegian drunk vomited in every toilet the length of the train, where smelly men pissed on their seats and despite being in first class, I still could smell all of that stuff combined. Husband decides to tell me all the emails I forgot to do concerning receipts and boring stuff, he makes lists of what I have forgot when in actual fact he could just do those tasks himself….
Anyway I woke up angry this morning as I was going back to my old pub that I used to own 12 years ago, the pub that my autobiography speaks about, the place where my life was formed and sometimes ruined, the place of my nightmares, I was going back to chat to a journalist from News of The World.
I suggested the place to be honest as I felt it would give the piece an in depth flavour. But I was stressed about it for some strange reason; I very rarely go back there, to the East End of Glasgow, except in my ever recurring nightmares, so I was slightly jagged this morning.
I washed the mad bushwhack of a head and tried to fix it looking nice as I knew there were photo’s to be done. I went into the bedroom and asked husband what he thought of my hair, he NEVER even looked and in my fragile state I shouted at him for not caring, not being there for me, not supporting me, not loving me enough, not taking on board how hard my life can get and by 11am I had decided on divorce.
By this time he was sitting up in bed startled, his hair was sticking up, his eyes were bleary and suddenly somewhere between BBC Radio 4’s ‘Woman’s Hour’ and the 11 o’clock news- his life was being dragged along a new path and before lunch time he was staring a life that would involve him being invariably single.
“Was it about the hair?” he mumbled trying to come to terms with a divorce as he struggled into his pants. I watched his half sleepy but terrified face trying to shake off the sleep mask and form some kind of semblance of conversation that would convince me he loved me and my hair was nice.
By this time, my hair looked ok and I had calmed down somewhat and started to get annoyed as he tried to hug me as I put on my lipstick “Was it about your hair? Is that why you want a divorce?” he continued.
“No? Are you now saying my hair is bad?” I barked.
His face quickly displayed three hundred mixed frightened emotions, it was like watching a scary movie slowly download on a crap computer, as his brain tried to work out his next move in this deathly mine field that is my psyche.
I knew I was committing emotional warfare on a badly prepared man, but fuck it; he ignored me in my hour of need so I had turned into the woman that even Koffi Anan would find it hard to negotiate with.
I left the house and did the interview, Anver was great, and she is interesting and sparky! Just my kind of woman!
So I am now home and husband is in the bedroom possibly sitting in a corner chewing his own hair, I may have to go and apologise….
Ok there was no sex in this blog that was the lie in the title.

Journey to Manchester…

I got up early to catch a train, as the replacement car Esure finally got for me (eight days late! Never get Esure insurance) is way too small and poky- so I opted for the train.
I hate sitting beside anyone so I spread my worldly goods all over four seats in the hope it would put people off joining me, but Lo and Behold…a young guy who stank of garlic breath, sat opposite me and breathed that stench constantly into my face for the majority of the journey.
I know that Britain is now anti-smoking due to the health issues but for fucksake garlic should be banned due to the honk it makes and how uncomfortable it becomes breathing it in for hours…it too should be only consumed at home and you should not be allowed out till the smell goes!
I know that’s a bit extreme but you didn’t have to sit beside someone for four hours smelling it in your nostrils.
The snow is lashing outside; big fluffy drifts of it are beating against the train windows as it speeds towards Manchester. Wee sheep in the fields that flash by my view are cowering as everything becomes white. Soon the sheep will be completely camouflaged and can move against the snow fields only being recognised by their black noses.
I watched big fat cows stumble about in a field where we stopped for a few minutes, they remind me of old portly women gathering in a huddle planning stuff, I think cows get together and plan to take over the world, I am sure they talk in perfect English and when we get near by the head Bull shouts-
“Quick! Humans are here…look daft and chew grass; pretend you are stupid and stare at the sky!”
The minute our cars or trains pass, they whip out a big game plan on a pull down flip chart that hangs from a tree and continue their evil plans to take over the human race and get us all back for that huge genocide we inflicted on them during the foot and mouth crisis.
Maybe my imagination works over time when inhaling garlic over a period of time, maybe garlic fumes are hallucagenic?
Who knows?
My last night at the ‘Confidence for Kids Comedy Workshops’ finished on Wednesday and the great wee kids/teenagers had their big performance last night. I could not be there as I was in Manchester. On the last day the kids brought in their one joke to tell at the performance night, the people (social workers) who organised the workshops came in to supervise the ‘joke content’ and that drove me mad.
Get this- one girl had a typical joke about the run down area she comes from like- a guy puts his hand out of the window of an aeroplane, he felt the heat and said’ I must be in the Sahara, then he felt the cold and said I must be in the Artic- then his watch was ripped off his wrist and he said I must be in Drumchapel’ Now Drumchapel is the area the workshops are in and it really does have major social problems (hence the workshops!) I thought it was a great joke but that was vetoed!
Another girl did the typical ‘ An Irish- a Scottish and an Englishman Joke which was banned as it took the piss out of the Irish-now I can see how that stereotypes people BUT they allowed one girl to tell a joke about ‘Blonde Women being dumb’.
So I turned to the girls in the group and said ‘That’s a lesson for life, every other subject is politically cleansed but being blonde does still make you stupid, what does that tell us from authority?
One wee guy smiled put up his hand and said “The social worker who banned it is actually blonde?”
“Yes!” I said smiling as the poor woman stood there blushing, with her hand over her dyed blonde hair!
The kids did well at the show I heard and I am very very proud of them, they are great wee kids and deserve to take the piss out of whatever gets them through the situations they are all in.
I will miss them as the workshops are done but we will meet again and I am sure they will tell filthy politically incorrect jokes till they die….and that’s good!

My Daughter today is mental…

My daughter is bored and therefore funny. She is working hard at Uni studying Film studies and screenplay writing, in her part time she works as a DJ and karaoke presenter and she is part of a comedy/improv troupe.
She will NEVER clean her room that now looks like some tiny wee island after its been invaded and pillaged by angry pirates…which brings me to my next subject.
She constantly plays Puzzle Pirates (whatever the fuck that is) and she just told me she needs my credit card to build her own ‘rig’ and that she is now the proud owner of 1000 doubloons. Frankly I am scared.
I know most mothers of nineteen year old girls have their concerns but surely one issue I was not prepared for was that my child is secretly a pirate!
She made me laugh so much telling me if she can have a credit card she can buy her own ship and kill more people…not a conversation I as prepared for!
Ok I know she is joking and she is so fucking hilarious, we are both writing a sketch show together and she never fails to make me laugh.
She told me she is going to Christian Speed Dating at Uni to sit there and say
“Hello I love God, Jesus and Holy things, do you want sex?” to every boy in fifteen minutes…just to see the look on their faces. That makes me smile…she really is mine and if they really are Christians then they will forgive her.
I asked her if there was an emails in for me and she said “Yes, but because I am bored I will explain your mail in the medium of physical theatre and dance” So I had to watch her prance all over the room pretending to be a crocodile having heart surgery whilst explaining to me that a journalist wanted to speak to me. I laughed my head off.
I am glad she does that, am so glad she is crazy, yet intelligent and funny.
She could have been boring and studious, which I am sure is good but an untidy wannabe pirate is even better.