Comedian Janey Godley speaks to the Border Telegraph

She is also a survivor of abject poverty, child sex abuse, domestic violence and the murder of her mum.

But before we can get into any of these many facets of her life, Janey begins her conversation with the Border Telegraph with the news she has been up half the night suffering from vertigo.

“First time in my life,” she says. “I’ve been up half the night with dizzy spells, so I thought I’d get this over with and then try and sleep on my side and no’ feel as though I’ve been swung on the waltzers.

“And the doctor’s is shut today, so what a f**ckin’ day.”

'I'll always keep talking'

Those who know of Janey will be unsurprised by her colourful verdict on the day so far. This is the woman whose opinion of US president Donald Trump – plastered on a placard and all over social media – can’t be shared in a family newspaper, even with asterisks in place.

And those who don’t know Janey should understand that she is a woman who, in her own words, “just won’t shut up”.

For her 355,000 followers across the many social media platforms on which she shares her opinions and jokes, this is an endless delight.

Whatever the issue, Janey will have something pithy to say about it; pithy, often explicit and always honest.

Janey’s career as a comedian was unplanned but unsurprising, given her background as a bar maid. If that sounds illogical, imagine the Glasgow pub she worked in and the skills necessary to quieten down the clientele – the same skills used to control a heckling comedy club audience.

Hopefully there will be no heckling at her next gig, an online conversation with author Val McDermid for the Borders Book Festival this Sunday.

She will be talking about her memoir, Handstands In The Dark, which details her poverty-stricken childhood and young adulthood, taking in the sexual abuse, her marriage into a Glasgow criminal family as a teenager, the murder of her mother, violence, religious sectarianism, poverty and a frightening family of in-laws.

Janey’s father was hard-working but an alcoholic, her mother irresponsible and debt-prone. She was regularly abused and raped by her uncle for most of her childhood. She left school at 16 and married at 18 into a Glasgow criminal family. Her husband was prone to depression and has lately been diagnosed with autism. Janey’s brother Mij was an HIV positive heroin addict who survived cancer but nevertheless died of liver failure in 2010. Her mother was murdered by a boyfriend.

It’s a lifetime that would give anyone a lot to talk about but her husband’s family was, says Janey, unaccustomed to women who had something to say.

“They were like, holy f*ck, why can’t she shut up, because I just won’t. I just won’t shut up, I’ll always keep talking, I’ll always keep saying what I want to say, and the more you tell me to be quiet, the louder I’ll get.

“If the world shut women up it’d be a poorer place for it.”

The Twitter trolls who routinely target Janey don’t seem to have cottoned on to this avowal that she can’t be silenced.

“They always think women should shut up and sit in a corner and be quiet and I won’t,” she repeats.

Surprisingly, considering how vocal the comedian is, the trolls still don’t seem to see her coming.

“Are you an anonymous male account that’s come on Twitter to tell a woman that you don’t like what she does and she should stop, and then you get angry ‘cos she just won’t stop, and she keeps on winning awards and keeps on getting more TV work and keeps on being successful, does that really bother you?” she asked one.

The Glasgow native says humour – often black – has been part of her life since a young age. In her book, she writes: “When I was about seven years old, I laughed when I realised the words ‘real fun’ are an anagram of ‘funeral’.”

“I use comedy as a weapon and a defence. It’s both my sword and my shield,” she says.

The voice of a nation?

This comedy is currently being put to good use in much-shared videos of her being the “voice” of Nicola Sturgeon, which last week scooped the Best Online Content prize in the Scottish Comedy Awards.

Even the First Minister found the voiceovers funny, saying of one in particular: “I would *never* use language like this, obvs – but we could all do with a smile just now. And if humour helps get the message across...”

Does Janey see herself perhaps going into politics?

“No,” she says. “Never. I want to be liked and I’ve got too much of a dodgy background.”

Neither does she consider herself the voice of a nation, despite her enormous following.

“I don’t think I’m the voice of a nation, I think I’m just a stupid woman with a phone that can do videos.”

She adds: “I didn’t ever see myself as being somebody who spoke to the world through a pandemic.”

It seems that Janey sees herself as speaking to people rather than for them. Social media is, she says, “just an extension of being a comedian, which is what I’ve been for years so I’m really enjoying that. And I get to be funny to a lot more people now.”

While she likes to be liked and to make people laugh, she wrote her memoir purely for herself.

“I think I wrote it to keep in touch with my past,” she says. “It’s important to remember where I came from, it’s important to remember the wee girl who had to leave school at 16 because she had no shoes.

“Those things are still valid and important to me today. Especially when we have issues like food poverty and period poverty and poverty in general.

“I was keeping my past alive, to remind myself how far I’d come as well.”

And she thinks many of her readers are also gratified by how far she’s come.

“I think people relate to a story of somebody that’s just real, and who have had their own life.

“I think people like to hear about people who struggle and come through the sh**ty bits and get to the okay bits.

“Most people who have got a really working class tough background, there’s a lot of expectation to succumb to addiction and abuse and when that person doesn’t it kind of makes you feel a bit better that it’s not the road everybody takes.

“But a lot of people do have to take that road as well,” she adds, not wanting to judge.

This desire to remain impartial is repeated in the message she has for anyone going though an experience similar to hers before her current success.

“Find your way,” she says. “There’s no right way, there’s no wrong way, there’s no perfect way through this.

“Find your own way to deal with it and stick to it, and don’t let anybody tell you that your voice isn’t valid.

“I spoke about my abuse a lot as a child; people just weren’t listening. So keep talking until you’re heard. Make sure you’re heard, make sure you’re seen.”

Janey Godley can be seen in conversation with Val McDermid at 7pm on Sunday, October 4 at bordersbookfestival.org/online-event/janey-godley-in-conversation-with-val-mcdermid

Also appearing on Sunday are Sir Chris Hoy at 11am and Andrew Marr at 4pm. For more information, go to bordersbookfestival.org