All Posts Tagged 'stand-up' (58)

I HAD cause to be in the Western Infirmary's accident and emergency unit in Glasgow recently. A huge fat teenager in his best sports wear (maybe he was in training for the forthcoming Commonwealth Games, in the running-with-a-knife event?) came in behind me. He obviously wasn't getting the immediate attention he deserved, what with his swagger (maybe he had a dislocated hip?) anyway....I disliked him because he sneered at me.…

So there I was finally on a train to London with my happy daughter Ashley. We travel well together, she has tour managed me in Australia and NZ so she knows when to shut up and when to make me tea. We sat in the first class bit of the Virgin train, listening to music and then I checked my twitter feed to find out Thatcher had died and I announce it loudly to the…

Me and my stand up comedy daughter Ashley Storrie are doing the comedy stage at RockNess, despite the press releases mistakenly calling her Ashley Godley and me Janey Godle....yes I know sounds like 'coddle', ok typos aside....am worried.

Glastonbury was amazing when I performed there a few times, but the flooding and extreme cold and the day Ashley jumped into a bloated stream to save…

I was in a supermarket in London last month.

I watched three young children, around five or six years old, sliding up and down the store squealing and pulling stuff off the shelves. They were like chattering, screaming meerkats on a hunt through the Kalahari Desert.

I looked for the parents and spotted…

I love the train, it gets busy at half term time, like it did when I came home from London recently. I got my ticket ready, this time it was easy to find.

The new system is you get to print out your own ticket which is an A4 sheet with a scan code on it, much better than 58 wee orange tickets we normally get, so am happy about this. Anyway, I got into the first class carriage and sat…

“A make-up brush costs £30? Is it made of gold?” my husband shouted and threw up both his hands when he was observing me logging my tax return.

He rolls his eyes and makes that huffing noise and shakes his head at me. I have boxes of receipts, so you can imagine how many theatrical displays he has been through. 

His physical theatre and dance…

Kuala Lumpur is where I went for one nights work. That's normal for a comedian, what's not normal is trying to explain that you are a female comic to Muslim women from Saudi Arabia on the flight over to Malaysia.

I still get a slight shock at seeing women with black gloves, socks and every inch of flesh covered in black material. I find it fascinating and try not to stare and…

It was Christmas 1974 and Shettleston was knee deep in thick hard snow. The cold seeped in through the badly designed council window frames and the coal strikes coupled with the 3 day week, made us all feel what Russia must be like. We were hungry and freezing.

My mum and dad had just split up and it was rough going, the bedroom was chittering cold and my mum was deeply…

"Let's go camping" my husband said. I didn't want to go, we bought the tent as I had been performing at Glastonbury and living in a cramped nylon box taught me this 'I don't like camping' So we compromised and we went camping.

Husband loves going up the highlands and I like it was well, especially when the sun shines and the tiny mosquitoes die…

You know that deep happy love feeling when you wake up and think your stomach will explode with excitement and you want to tell this person you love absolutely every thought, fear or desire but think it's best not to, because when the love fades and the s*** hits the fan they might use it against you in a future argument?

That's not love, that's endorphins & a hormone…

“Ma, can I get a Bay City Roller Jumper - they are selling them at the Co-op for £1.99?” I shouted through the toilet door to my mammy. "Everybody has one" I added.

My dog Major was at my feet begging to be taken out for a pee, his toe nails were scratching and clicking on the cold lino. Maybe he heard my Ma peeing and this set him off.

“Where will I get two…

Yes, a big husky dog did try to have sex with me at the traffic crossing, am telling you- weird things happen here in Toronto. Here's what happened, I was standing at a busy traffic crossing on my way to Yuk Yuk's comedy club, beside me a young guy backpacker had a huge grey and white gorgeous husky wolf dog on a lead. The dog stared at me, I made eye contact and it kind of dog smiled and leapt on me with sexual intentions (clearly the eye contact was a…

Back in the late 60s and 70s we didn’t have mobile phones or computer games, our politicians were toffy old upper class English men who sailed yachts (oh hang on that is today as well) and our pop charts were dominated with men in their 40s singing about Love and Marriage or stabbing women to death who happened to laugh at you and had the unfortunate name Delilah. It was different times.

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People who get together at an event and hire an after dinner speaker for a wad load of cash deserve a good night. I am not writing here to berate the after dinner speakers circuit - I won after Dinner Speaker of The Year and beat 9 men to the title. I like after dinner speaking: to me it's a way of doing comedy in a nice dress to people who normally wouldn't come out to a comedy club and hopefully giving them a taste for it.…

Edinburgh had been basked in sunshine when I arrived last week. I kept staring up to the sky wondering ‘what is going on’ and when it will batter down with rain. (The answer was -a short shower after I got my hair done obviously).

Having decided not to do the fringe this year (which am totally not regretting for reasons you will read later) but am enjoying the gigs and getting…

This is the second year I haven’t done a one woman show at Edinburgh fringe and am thoroughly enjoying the freedom of it all. I have done 10 years of shows sometimes 3 full hour shows a day and loved it but never dared to go see much as I was always focused on my own work. Performing makes you selfish and needy so not doing a show makes you open and accommodating.…

Many years ago I used to hang out in a wee Italian Café in Shettleston where I was born.

It’s a small place Shettleston; it’s the kinda place where if the full moon gets reflected in the local pond, people threw in dead cats to see if they will be resurrected in its magical waters. I am exaggerating, it’s not that mental. But the locals were ‘special’ in some ways.…

Trains are my friend, unless fate decides to halt the trains, through landslides, fire and flood and then in that case, I get worried sick. I had to get a train to London last week; firstly I was heading to Tom Parker Bowles book launch for his stunning “recipes from my kitchen notebook” ‘Let’s Eat’. The good news is the train did get there and on the way I managed to tune into a relationship between a guy called Tim and woman called Freya and I basically tweeted the whole…

You can guarantee a few things in my life, one is my ears will hurt and the other is I will get abused online.

So I woke up Saturday morning with the usual leaky sore itchy ears and spent the day dosed up with painkillers. There is nothing can be done about my ears, they keep being leaky and wet, and specialists don’t know what to do.

I went onto twitter and saw that Armando Iannucci the Scottish comedy writer had been given an OBE by The Queen…