Janey Godley, 62, says she accepts she could die from cancer within a year

Janey Godley has accepted that she could die from cancer in a year, but says she can meet death and her family will be taken care of.

The comedian, 62, was diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer in 2021 and is undergoing weekly chemotherapy.

Janey was told she was cancer-free last June, but by the end of the year the disease had spread to her peritoneum, the membrane that lines the abdominal cavity.

Now, in an exclusive interview with MailOnline, Janey says that while she could die within a year, she takes comfort in knowing that her husband Sean Storrie, 61, and their daughter Ashley Storrie, 36, will be financially secure.

‘I worked hard. I have a wonderful daughter. I have a marriage that has lasted 43 years,” says Jane.

“I am proud of the fact that despite all the s*** that was thrown at me, I managed to secure my family financially, which was very important to me coming from such poverty.

“It’s very important that my daughter never has to worry about the electricity bill, being evicted or not paying the rent.

“She never has to worry about her dinner. Level six has been reached, so I can leave the game.’

Janey receives regular chemotherapy to keep it at bay.

The comedian says: ‘The treatment I get is once a week, then I go back to once every three weeks. My last scan was clear and I have to keep doing the chemo until it takes over again.

‘It’s coming back. It’s the nature of that cancer. It starts as ovarian cancer, then peritoneal cancer and then they keep fighting it until my body decides I can’t take it anymore.’

While she has accepted the prognosis, others are struggling.

“I have to accept that I have something life-limiting that isn’t completely obvious. That is difficult for people to understand,’ she says.

“Friends and family agree that this is not a good story. It’s not the story of Janey getting cancer and then making amends. It’s hard for people.’

Ashley, who is by her side as she chats in her Glasgow home, has understandably found it difficult to accept her mother’s fate.

“We are both told that we are very brave, but we just cry about everything. Ashley cries a lot.

‘Living with a life-limiting illness does not make you a hero or an inspiration. I just live until I can’t live anymore. I don’t think that’s brave.

“Brave runs into a burning building and pulls out a pacifier, or a brain surgeon operating on babies. Those people are brave.’

The comedian shot to fame when she held up a rude sign to Donald Trump in 2016.

Her profile rose during the pandemic thanks to her parody voiceovers of Nicola Sturgeon’s daily Covid briefings.

She was chosen to be the face of a Scottish government Covid campaign until several offensive historical tweets of hers resurfaced.

The ads were quickly dropped when her jokes about the disabled, Chernobyl victims and black celebrities Kelly Rowland and Snoop Dogg came to light.

A Freedom of Information request revealed that then Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon had been warned by advisers about the risks of hiring the comedian, but went ahead anyway.

Over £120,000 of the taxpayer’s money was spent on the Stop the Spike adverts, with Janey receiving £12,000 which she later donated to charity.

The comedian, who apologized for her posts, recalls: “I was canceled when those tweets came out.

“I was so embarrassed that I had written those things that were really nasty and I don’t know where they came from.”

She tries to put her old controversies behind her.

She says, “I’m proud of the life I’ve lived. Like everyone else, I made some mistakes.

“It wouldn’t be a good life if it was lived too well, but I’ve achieved everything I set out to achieve.”

Janey will speak to Sturgeon about her debut novel Nothing Left Unsaid on May 26 at Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall as part of the Aye Write Book Festival.

The book, which she wrote months before learning of her diagnosis, begins with a woman being hospitalized for cancer.

She is now writing a sequel to her 2005 autobiography Handstands in the Dark.

Janey, who was sexually abused as a child by her uncle, David Percy, who served time in prison for his crimes in 1996, said: ‘I’m trying to live my life on the same level as before.

“I went on tour, I still do gigs. I got up this morning and wrote 3,000 words of my new book.

“It turns out well that I became a comedian and all the TV stuff I did, went to New Zealand and ran comedy clubs in London, the child molestation trial, the row with my abuser’s family, an award-winning grandstand have become -up, be canceled, then cancer.

“I’ll keep trying until the treatment is so bad I decide I don’t want to, but I’ll be fine.”

In April, she accepted the inaugural Billy Connolly Spirit of Glasgow Award from the Big Yin herself at Glasgow’s International Comedy Festival.

She and Ashley met Billy in New Zealand in 2012. But they didn’t talk about comedy, but about something that moved them both.

Janey said, ‘He’s great company. We talked about art and he waited for Ashley to get a cup of tea before we talked about child abuse.

‘We had exactly the same level of pragmatism.

“We have not emotionalized the child abuse. It was something very strange. It was two people talking without being emotionally drowned out by the subject.

“He had read my book and said to me, ‘So you were also abused?’ He said, “Mine was my father,” and I said, “Mine was my uncle.”

“He said, ‘We both deserved better, didn’t we?’

Janey finally receives therapy to help her deal with the consequences of the child abuse she suffered at the hands of her uncle, David Percy, whom she took to court in 1996.

He was sentenced to 26 years but died in his sleep in 2007.

“Now that I’m dying, I’m getting therapy. Part of my therapy is to stop looking for things to annoy you. I have a lot to do with life as it is.

‘I’ll get there.’