JANEY GODLEY is the only female Scottish comic with a solo show on the Fringe this year - but that is immaterial, really. Even if she were four blokes from Birmingham she’d still be hilarious.

Few performers can draw on such a wealth of life experience. Years running salt (and scum) of the earth pubs and more than two decades with Glasgow gangster in-laws have given her the sort of worldly wisdom that can’t be bought.

She also suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a relative when aged just five, and it’s a measure of her comedic gifts that she can address this weighty issue and get genuine laughs, rather than sympathetic sniffles as she heaps scorn on the deceased offender and examines attitudes to therapy. While laying such cards on the table is part of the way she addresses the shadows in her past, there’s plenty in it for the crowd as well - at no point does Godley wallow in her own suffering to the exclusion of a thought-provoking laugh.

Obviously, there’s little that Godley will shy away from in the way of material, but she also isn’t the sort of comic who rams an inflexible viewpoint down the audience’s throat.

Having ascertained the number of Christians present in the crowd, she proceeds to deconstruct the Bible with withering wit, but without ridiculing or insulting the faith of the believers. She contrasts the good book with her forthcoming autobiography and from some of the tales she tells it’s going to be quite a read. "It will make Angela’s Ashes seem like The Famous Five," as one insider put it.

As with the comedy show, names have been changed to protect the innocent and the not-so-innocent, and from what she says about her husband’s family’s er . . . business connections, it’s a safe bet the polis will be going over the book with a fine-tooth comb too.

That’s not to say Godley’s some kind of Howard Marks revelling in tales from the wrong side of the law - she is always quick to point out that her in-laws never dealt drugs and stuck to bank jobs. And it’s not all Glasgow gangsters - 15 years as a pub landlady have given her a wealth of material, as has being the mother of a beautiful teenage daughter.

She delves depths of depravity like Jerry Sadowitz, but also exudes a real warmth that the miserabilist magician will never have. In the end, you can’t help but like and admire Godley - words few have used in connection with Sadowitz - but they’re both comparable as people you’d be reluctant to trade insults with.

She may be the only Scottish woman with a stand-up show of her own on the Fringe, but even if she had dozens of rivals, she’d still be a safe bet to outshine the rest.