The Times- She’s behind you: why crony Janey Godley fell flat
She’s behind you: why crony Janey Godley fell flat
Comic pulls out of panto over tweets but this is all about SNP favouritism
The apology, when it came, was undermined by the deployment of the “context” defence.
When it emerged that the comedian Janey Godley, hired by the Scottish government to front a campaign encouraging people to act to prevent a further coronavirus spike, had a history of sending problematic tweets, she found herself at the centre of storm.
Things played out as they inevitably do in these cases. First, various nationalists, including some politicians, rallied to the SNP supporter Godley’s defence. She may have used offensive language about disabled people but what was really going on here was that Godley was the victim of a unionist effort to hurt her and, by extension, the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon. Godley issued an apology.
Then, as seems always to be the case, further troubling social media activity emerged. Godley had tweeted about a number of black celebrities, using appalling language. The singer Kelly Rowland, for example, was a “horsey face black wummin”.
This was too much even for Godley’s chums at the top of government. All campaign material filmed with the comedian has been scrapped. The controversy surrounding her was considered a risk to the effectiveness of the campaign she was fronting.
Godley’s second apology — the line about words being taken out of context, aside — was fully at the grovelling end of the spectrum. Godley said she recognised the hurt her words had caused and deserved the criticism she had received. “If I can’t own the shame of these words,” she added, “I would be disingenuous to everyone who supported me. I am so sorry to everyone I hurt.”
She also announced that she would be donating the £12,000 fee she had received for her part in the campaign to a children’s charity. This, even Godley’s fiercest critics would surely concede, was as contrite an apology as anyone has a right to receive.
Godley’s work isn’t for me. Her brand of Glasgow sentimentalism, even when the language gets raw, is a bit cloying for my tastes. But if we look back over the past year and a half of the pandemic, Godley has been a generally positive force. Those who like that sort of thing thoroughly enjoyed the videos she made, in which she’d overdub Sturgeon’s voice with more earthy content.
I don’t suppose it’s for me, a middle-aged white man, to pronounce upon whether Godley has said and done enough to merit forgiveness for the hurt she may have caused to others but, so far as I can see, she’s done everything she can to make things right.
The Scottish Conservative Party, however, is in no mood to forgive and forget. On Friday the Tory MSP Douglas Lumsden wrote to the management at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Aberdeen suggesting they should remove her from the cast of this year’s pantomime, Beauty and the Beast. Lumsden will be happy that the children of Aberdeen have been spared the horror of seeing Godley in action after she withdrew from the production. A preferable outcome would have been for everyone to have taken a breath. Running a relentless campaign to make her unemployable seems a miserable way for anyone to spend their time.
Of course, the reason so many political figures are keen to punish Godley is that she is yet another Scottish artist who’s perfectly happy palling up to the SNP government. Godley may see herself as a great thundering voice speaking truth to power but the truth is she’s little more than a nationalist court jester who wouldn’t dream of speaking truth to SNP power.
Back in the days of the 2014 independence campaign, a number of Scottish cultural figures declared their support for independence. They were, of course, perfectly entitled to do so but, in some instances, artists got too close to power for comfort. A writer may tell himself he’s a radical thinker, a visionary agent of change, but when he’s standing on stage at a conference organised by the party of government, he might want to check his outsider status.
During its many years in political opposition, the SNP complained about the Labour “establishment” and its culture of cronyism. In power, the SNP has shown it does cronyism better than most. Scotland’s institutions are now run either by loyal nationalists or by those who know better than to criticise our current government.
The big problem with the decision to hire Godley to front the coronavirus campaign doesn’t lie in some old tweets she might have sent but in the fact that nobody in government thought it the slightest bit problematic that a chunky contract was being handed over to a pro-Sturgeon hanger-on.
It is often said that Scottish government ministers are afraid to take on bold projects because they fear failure might damage the independence cause. I suspect many Scottish writers and comedians apply similar logic. What other reason can there be for relative silence from Scottish artists on such massive issues as our record annual drug deaths?
The many and varied failings of Nicola Sturgeon’s government should be fuel for the satirists and the polemicists alike. But there’s rarely a peep from a cultural sector that views the first minister as a great radical progressive rather than the cautious, small “c” conservative figure she truly is.
There’s a lot of talk about cancel culture these days, with particular concerns having been raised about the freedom of academic and political figures. Now, I’m not for a moment suggesting there was any merit to the tweets Godley sent. They were witless and worthless. But those who scent blood right now and see the opportunity to end the career of an SNP-sympathising comedian are walking on treacherous ground.
They might, from their glass houses, enjoy the sight of a rival in difficulty but are they really concerned about standards in public life or are they opportunists driven by tribalism rather than moral indignation?
And while those rallying the mob over Godley might want to stop and examine their motives, so the artists and performers happy to align themselves with the SNP might ask themselves whether it’s possible for them to support independence without becoming nothing more than government stooges.
Alex Massie is away
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