Inside Janey Godley's difficult childhood and heartbreaking family secret

Janey Godley has died from ovarian cancer at the age of 63. The actress and writer, who achieved huge success in the world of comedy, often opened up about her tough childhood and family heartbreaks

Scottish comedian Janey Godley has sadly died at the age of 63.

The star revealed she had ovarian cancer in November 2021 and was given an all clear the following year. The disease returned however and she went into end-of-life care in a hospice this September.

The comedian leaves behind her devoted husband Sean Storrie and their daughter Ashley Storrie, who made Janey incredibly proud when she followed in her footsteps into stand-up.

Ashley had revealed her mum was in the "final beats of her life" on Thursday and Janey was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Glasgow in her final days, bringing her in the words of her daughter "so much joy".

The star was the youngest of four children, raised in poverty in Glasgow's East End by alcoholic parents. Once calling herself "uneducated and from the wrong side of the tracks", Janey told the Guardian in 2019: "I had nits, scabies, we were poor."

"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 added.

The comedian suffered sexual abuse as a child at the hands of her maternal uncle. "My uncle David was my mum's brother, he was a bit transient," she said in Janey, a BBC special about her life.

"He thought it would be a secret - the abuse. His first mistake was abusing me, and his second was abusing someone who grew up to have the loudest mouth in the world."

David Percy was jailed at Glasgow Sheriff Court in 1996 for abusing Janey and her big sister Ann for years when they were little girls. Both women bravely waived their right to anonymity to speak out, revealing their marriages had been affected by their traumatic ordeals.

"It has taken 30 years for us to start our lives again but the whole nightmare has brought us much closer together," said Janey. "For all these years before our family's dirty secret came out, we always knew that something existed between the two of us. Anyone who has been abused knows you cannot shake off the guilt. But the guilty one was Percy."

Janey's mother drowned in the River Clyde in 1982 and the star believes she was murdered. At the time, Janey was running a pub with her husband in the tough neighbourhood of Calton, at the height of a heroin epidemic in the city.

She had wed Sean in 1980 when she was just 19, with her husband hailing from a Glasgow gangster family. When its patriarch, Sean's dad "Old George" Storrie, died suddenly, the couple left the clan and Janey later found her work as a landlady had been the perfect way to sharpen her quick wit.

"I'd get big, burly men come in shouting and I'd have to shut them up and the best way to do it was to have an answer for everybody," she told the Guardian. "When I started headlining clubs, people would be amazed at my crowd control because I could shut up 700 loud drunks, but that's just being a good barmaid. When I started doing comedy, I felt like I'd come home."