YOU'LL struggle to try and get stand up comedian Janey Godley off a stage. And she admits it.

Even on the phone, she makes her recent holiday to Lanazarote sound like a comedy routine in itself.

Weird characters, like the ex-Royal butler tour rep, come to life as Janey does the voice that kept her and daughter Ashley in stitches the whole holiday.

Don't ask her to judge other comedians, she said, Janey finds it hard – not least because as soon as she sees an empty stage she wants to be up there.

"Why is there a mike onstage if I am not up there?" she laughed.

And for the last few years, the stage hasn't been enough to contain the larger than life personality.

These days, Janey writes a weekly newspaper column as well as writing for various publications. You can check out her blog – one of the first back in 2004 – at www.janeygodley.blog.co.uk

Janey also she shared her often harrowing, but certainly eventful life – from child abuse to marrying a gangster – in her memoir Handstands In The Dark.

"The book has been weird," said Janey.

"In 2003 I took a show to the Edinburgh Festival and someone saw the show, heard some of the honest anecdotes from my life and contacted Random House and someone from the publisher came to see the show and went ' Oh my God, is all this real?'."

It was and Janey enjoyed the writing experience: "For me, it was a really interesting thing to do, like writing a huge diary."

But she's not sure whether there'll be another book.

"I'm not sure, I haven't really got around to it.

"I've got a recording of all my life or history. So now my great, great grandchildren can find out all about me.

"I know nothing about my ancestors, so at least my grandchildren will know this is what life was like in the 80s.

"My daughter was talking to me about an interview and one of the questions was 'Would you have done comedy if you hadn't had such an interesting and difficult background?'

"I think it did help having an edgier response with child abuse and married to a gangster. It's more meat for the gander and I don't regret anything that happened."

Domestic Godley is the name of Janey's new show for this summer's Edinburgh Festival "It's called that because I'm really crap at it all. But in the show I say that you don't need to know how to make soup if you like sex. And sex is quicker and doesn't involve handling barley."

Daughter Ashley is following in her mum's comedy footsteps, writing and performing.

"Ashley has done stand up since she was 11 and that is the great thing about comedy," said Janey. "There is no age limit.

"The American George Carlin – he's just died, he was 71. And he was as potent onstage at 71 as he was at 21.

"It's one job where age isn't important, your ability to entertain an audience is everything.

"I mean, Billy Connolly's still cracking it out and he's in his 60s and he's as good today as he was back when, so that's a great thing about comedy.

"It's the one form of entertainment where the old woman can still be the leading lady," Janey said with a chuckle in her voice.

"I'm old in comparison to the other female comedians. There are lots of men who are older than me, but there's not many older women than me, I'm 47 and I'm still a stand up, but I go onstage every weekend with 22 year olds.

And people just laugh as loud at me as they do the 21-year-old.

"With comedy it's a meritocracy and it doesn't really have an age limit.

"People don't say when I come on the stage 'Oh, she's an old woman, this isn't going to be funny'.

"I only started at 34, so I was old to start off with."

For Janey, the laughs come when she goes onstage.

"It comes to me," she said. "I've never written anything down."

"Things happen."

And from digiboxes to the Tweenies' colour scheme her family had painted the house while she played New Zealand, the whole world seems to be Janey's stage.