“Janey, Sweet Pea, where are you?” I hid further behind the bedroom door, trying to flatten myself against the flowery wall paper. In the background the Beatles were singing their latest song, I breathed quietly. Living in the small two bedroomed flat in Glasgow’s East End, it was difficult to avoid my uncle David. He was my mother’s younger and much adored brother. He was about 12 years older than me and my abuser, smiling and playing the ‘favourite uncle’ - a role he relished.

My mum had many problems due to her depression and her life was swinging from one debt-ridden crisis to another. My father was a hard working man, who had drink problems, yet he was very loving and supportive when he was sober. I lived for his affection, the safety of his presence. My uncle would often get me on my own and sexually molest me; his abuse escalated to violence. The sexual nature and intimacy of having him touch me was initially shocking. I don’t think I ever got over the caution filling my soul every time my uncle smiled or called after me by name. I hated him saying my name. I got used to the shame but never totally accustomed to the pain.

I did feel terribly isolated at times and would feel ‘dirty’ and ‘bad’. I told my big sister about the ‘tickling’ my uncle had been doing that I hated and she whispered to me that she knew what I meant. He had been abusing her also. She told me we should try to keep away from him at home. This was so difficult as my mother would get him to baby-sit us.

I think I believed I deserved to be mistreated. I even hurt myself at times. I used to tie my hair into little knots and pull them out and leave bald patches (I still sometimes do this and have to consciously stop myself.)

My mum could be very loving, but when I told her about the abuse when I was around seven years old, she recoiled in sheer revulsion yet she hissed a stark chilling warning to me: “If you tell your daddy, he will kill your uncle and daddy will go to prison; is that what you want?” I knew I would have to stay quiet. I let that pain of abandonment just leak through me and walked out of the room with a deadened, neglected spirit that truly has never fully recovered.

As an adult, my relationship with my mother was one of silent lies and a legacy of mistrust. I loved my father and always knew he was there for me. He kept my faith alive that good men were out there.

I met my husband very young; we were teenagers when we married. He encouraged me to speak out about the abuse. I thought he would have been repulsed by it all, but he reminded me that my uncle took nothing from me and that I would always be a whole person.

Years later I called my sister out of the blue and just mentioned how I felt about my uncle and the whole story came flooding out. We revisited the pain that day and both of us have always tried to support each other. She told me she thought if she let him abuse her he would leave me alone. That one statement cut deeply into my heart; to think my sister had in some way sacrificed herself as a child hurts me deeply and to this day I lie awake and silently cry at the horror of that lost innocence.

My life has never been one based on pain or sadness, though. I love life and always loved looking at the weird and wry side of that. Despite my past I still feel I had a happy childhood; it was not all horror. Being a comic and standing on stage gives me a surge of completeness that is hard to put into words. Making a crowd laugh will always lift my soul. That’s who I am and nothing can touch that or make it dirty or bad.