Janey Godley – making good from an unlikely start

Janey Godley, the extraordinarily successful Scots comedienne is wowing them at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this year with her political satire though continuing to crack jokes about her abuse as a child, the murder of her mother and marriage into a gangster family. She has a sell-out tour round the UK coming.

She was born 20 January 1961 with an alcoholic father and a chaotic, debt-prone mother in Glasgow’s East End. She was abused by an uncle throughout her childhood, until she threatened him with a red-hot poker, left school with no qualifications, married at 19 to the son of a local gangster and worked in the family pub where she honed her witty, acerbic chat. Her mother was murdered, she believes, by a violent boyfriend. “I had nits, scabies, we were poor,” she says of her childhood. “I remember eating out of bins and being a teenager with dirty clothes. But I was bright and I loved reading, so I had the chance to escape. And I’m not ashamed of it, because it wasn’t my fault.”

She moved into a stand-up career in her 30s, having abandoned the gangster family.

She is probably an Aquarius Sun with Mercury also in Aquarius, a favourite comedians’ sign; with Jupiter Saturn conjunct in Capricorn giving her strong ideals and a way with money. It’s a chart that really needs a birth time to make sense. But even without it there are three inconjuncts, putting her out of step with her environment – Sun inconjunct Mars in Cancer, Mercury to Pluto and Saturn to Uranus.

Her victim/saviour 12^th Harmonic is notable with an inspirational Grand Trine of Mars, Saturn, Neptune and a Grand Cross of Mars, Venus, Uranus, Mercury – she’s a survivor and a fighter.

Her get-it-together 5H is also strong as is her obsessive 11H.