by Brian Beacom.
Glasgow Evening Times, 19th March 2005

Glasgow comedy star Janey Godley wrote her new play to warn her daughter about the dangers of heroin addiction. Now, Janey and 18-year-old Ashley are set to stage the play together at the Soho Theatre in London.

Calton-born Janey is renowned for her dark comedy, much of it based on her own life experience. However, Janey wasn't looking for laughs when she wrote Smack - The Point of Yes, which deals with heroin addiction. She admits she wrote the play to educate Ashley.

"My brother was a drug addict, " said Janey. "And my mother was addicted to valium. I wanted Ashley to be aware of all that, but without preaching to her. At the same time I was aware that although she has grown up in the more rarefied air of the west end and goes to a nice school, the temptations to take hard drugs still abound. I wanted her to see the process of how someone can so easily get caught up in the downward spiral to drugs hell."

Janey's play, a Shirley Valentine-meets-Trainspotting story, is based on her own life experience, but with a twist.

"I didn't take drugs. I ran a pub in the Calton and I was an ordinary, dull, bored housewife. But I also play my alter ego, a woman who gets bored with the routine and decides to experiment with heroin and ends up in prostitution. It suggests that life's fortunes hinge on a moment. And that 'moment' is when my character takes heroin, hence the title, the point when you say 'Yes'."

Janey, who is back in Glasgow tonight with her stand-up show, based the addict character on a collection of people she knows.

"There are heroin addicts all around, all trying to coax you into their way of life. That's what I wanted Ashley to think about."

Ashley is the play's associate director, and it's not down to nepotism on her mother's part.

"Ashley has worked as a stand-up since she was 13 and she has already directed Shakespeare. But most of all she understands me and keeps me right."

Ashley is delighted to be working with her mother in London.

"Working with your mother can be difficult, especially when she's an inveterate attention seeker, " she said. "But she knows I can see when she's wandering off the plot and I keep her right. Well, up to a point. If I give her too much criticism of her performance she tells me to go and clean my room."

In June, Janey's harrowing biography Handstands In The Dark will be released. In it she reveals that as a child she was abused by her uncle and speaks of the murder of her mother.