A Scottish comedian remembers the joy of being insulted by Joan Rivers

In the late 1980s, Janey Godley was a barkeep in Glasgow, hanging out with gangsters and living on the edge. Then someone gave her the book Enter Talking by Joan Rivers. It changed Godley's life.

"I remember thinking, 'Wow, a woman can be a stand-up,'" Godley says. She'd never thought about doing comedy before because the female comics she saw on TV were so alien to her own experience.

"I never wanted to be a comedian in a bright colorful jumper on a piano singing ditties in a lovely English accent," Godley says. "My comedy was always destined to be harder and hardcore, a bit filthy. The kind of comedy that would hit you with a brick." 

In the 1980s, women on British television were basically treated like light entertainment, according to Godley. "Female stand-ups were just there for the women, when you were bored with the men. But Joan Rivers was a stand-up that looked like she could also make men laugh."  

Godley's brand of humor is rough and ready. She smokes and she swears — a lot. 

"To this day, it still irks me when I get in a cab or meet somebody new and I say I'm a stand-up, and the first thing people ask is whether I swear," Godley gripes. "Why are you asking whether I swear? Is this 1932?" She considers Joan Rivers a soulmate on this subject. People should just lighten up.

Several years ago, Godley actually met Rivers. Both were performing at The Fringe, Edinburgh's month-long summer festival. Godley's daughter, Ashley, was outside the festival hawking flyers to promote her mother's show.

"So she's out there saying, 'Come see my mom! Come see my mom!'" Godley remembers. "Joan Rivers stops and says, 'Oh my God. You're pushing flyers for your mum's show. Isn't that sweet?' And Ashley says, 'Yeah. I broke her ovaries back in 1986, so this is the crap I have to suffer.'" 

About an hour later, Godley was sitting in a nearby bar, when her manager walked in with Joan Rivers. "I told Rivers how honored I was to meet her and she said, 'Hang on a minute. I saw your daughter in the Royal Mile. She's really tall. She's beautiful. She's so funny. Are you sure you're actually her mother?'"

Godley was delighted. "That made me laugh because it was such a Joan Rivers thing to say." 

Joan Rivers provided a model for Godley's decision to do stand-up, but the Scottish comedian didn't like everything Rivers riffed about. "I disagreed when she slagged off celebrities' dresses," she says. "'Oh my god, that dress! Where did you get that? Did you strip a dog?'"

Godley doesn't give a toss what people wear to the Oscars. "I would love it if women showed up at the Oscars or the Emmys in a Guantanamo boiler suit, because then people might focus on their talent," she says. When asked one time what she was going to wear to a big event, Godley replied, "Clothes that will cover my vagina and breast so the public don't scream. That's what I'm wearing."

On the subject of the September 18 Scottish independence referendum, Godley refers to her daughter, who is 28 and still lives at home. "Independence has never been a big issue in her life. She still lets her mom pay the rent."

But on a personal level, Godley is a bit more sanguine. "I want to be a woman that lives in a country that is owned by its own people," she says, "just because I could finally get rid of those two pandas that can't have sex in the Edinburgh Zoo. It's unusual to see something that has two black eyes and no children in Scotland."

Janey Godley just finished up 53 shows at this year's Fringe Festival. To celebrate, she went to Spain for a vacation. And when a Spaniard she met found out she was a stand-up, what's the first thing he asked?

"Do you swear?"