Stand-up thwarts suicide bid

Stand-up comic Janey Godley last night saved a suicidal man from throwing himself to his death.

The comedian intervened after spotting the man hanging onto a drainpipe high above the Edinburgh street where she is staying during the Fringe.

She barged her way through the crowd of tourists who had gathered to take pictures, video footage - and even shout sick encouragements for him to jump - to talk the man down.

"Don't you dare jump and land on me," she yelled at him, "I've got two Fringe shows to worry about."

Her intervention calmed the man down, and he agreed to step back inside his building on Grassmarket. The Glaswegian comic then helped clean up the wounds on his hand from climbing on the drainage.

"Nobody would help," she said, "even though his hands were covered in blood. I got some towels from a restaurant which knows me, and brought some plasters."

The man then told Godley that he was called Gary, was 42 years old and an alcoholic.

"I asked him if he was a [drug] user," the comic told Chortle. "I wasn't worried about HIV, but hepatitis. He told me he was just an alcoholic."

Godley's own brother is a junkie - a fact explored in her Edinburgh one-woman play Point Of Yes, which also covers her mother's murder.

Although initially reluctant to talk of her dramatic incident for fear of being seen to be exploiting the situation, Godley explained that she used humour to talk him down because of her experiences running a tough Glasgow pub.

"I'd always use humour to stop fights," she said. "If two blokes became aggressive, I'd say, 'Oi! It's me who starts the fights in here.'"

But last night's problems didn't end when she talked the man out of killing himself - because that was when the police showed up.

"They kept asking who I was," Godley said, "I told them it didn't matter. But they didn't handle the situation well. They threatened to put him in the cells or fine him - I nearly punched one of them.

"They ran a check on whether Gary had any previous, but there was nothing. Then they had a go at him for trying to jump in front of so many people. They were more worried about what effect it would have on the tourists than they were about him."

The comic, who is also performing a full-length stand-up show in Edinburgh, then reunited Gary with his friends - though promised to return to visit him later that night to check how he was coping after his stressful ordeal.

Published: 2 Aug 2003