IT TAKES all sorts to make a comedian, but for extraordinary life stories, Janey Godley’s is one of the most extreme.

Married into a family of big-time Glasgow crooks at the age of 17, Godley is a hard-as-nails gangster’s moll who honed her patter on the mean streets and in the pubs of the city’s East End.

Her stories are of midnight police raids, Semtex in the laundry room and encounters with the battle-scarred members of the Glasgow razor gangs.

But Godley also lets you into the tale of her own sexual abuse, her relationship with her public school-educated daughter, and her inner dialogue with the big black man who lives inside her head.

Her patter is as quick and confident as you would expect from a woman who knows how to talk to men whose faces have been slashed from ear to ear.

Godley has the ear of a natural storyteller and a fearless line in: "I can’t believe she just said that" punchlines which have the audience screaming with laughter.

She claims that her mouth has always got her into trouble and she always "says the wrang thing". But what she really has is an ability to take it right up to the edge and pull back.

It’s great to see a mouthy, in-your-face, older woman taking on the boys on the comedy circuit, and Janey Godley really takes it in her stride.

Despite her claims to be "Good Godley", she has a tendency to opt for punchlines such as "and so I had him killed", and to cut short anecdotes that will give too much information to the police. And you can’t quite credit her wide eyed claims that she knew nothing about the arms cache in the tumble drier.