Nun-punching quip backfires

Scottish stand-up Janey Godley has provoked a storm of protest by encouraging people to ‘punch nuns for Jesus’.

In an interview with London’s Time Out magazine, the comic said: “I reckon, if you punch five nuns over the age of 72, you're sure to hurt three who’ve beaten unmarried mothers and orphans in a workhouse in the Sixties. Jesus will be happy you did that.”

But her comments enraged at least one nun.

The Reverend Sister Judith Blackburn wrote to the magazine, saying: “Since when has it been cool to punch anyone?

“As a regular reader of Time Out, and a nun, I am so angry. Many members of my community have been mugged or verbally abused by complete strangers. Do we deserve it?”

But even that provoked more letters to this week’s edition.

One reader, who wanted their name withheld, said: “Having been in one of those convents from hell in the Sixties, where the nuns put the fear rather than the love of God into us, Janey Godley's quip made me laugh out loud about it all for the first time in 40 years. The laugh did more for my soul than the nuns ever did. Bless her.”

However another reader felt the comic ‘trivialised the suffering of tens of thousands of Irish people’ who had been left traumatized after being systematically humiliated and beaten by the Sisters of Mercy.

Published: 22 Jul 2004