Janey Godley offensive tweets: Scottish Government hired comedian despite racist tweets being flagged up

Scottish Government ministers hired comedian Janey Godley to front an anti-litter campaign despite a member of the public flagging up racist tweets on her timeline.

Janey Godley has come under fire for offensive tweets.

A woman who reportedly wrote to the Scottish Government as early as June amid concerns about Godley’s work for Zero Waste Scotland (ZWS) was told that ZWS had carried out checks and was satisfied with the result.

However, the Scottish Government claimed today that the information which had been highlighted was not in fact shared with the marketing team responsible for the campaign.

Ms Godley, 60, was paid a reported £12,000 for a different series of TV adverts, which were running online under the hashtag #Stopthespike amid rising coronavirus rates. She reportedly later gave the fee to charity.

According to the Sun, the latest allegations relate to a previous deal in which she fronted an anti-litter campaign, and were revealed after one woman wrote to the Scottish Government with concerns.

The response from the Scottish Government Directory For Environment and Forrestry claimed: “Zero Waste Scotland carried out the due diligence and were satisfied with the findings.”

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “The tweets that have emerged, which were posted by Janey Godley were completely indefensible and she has rightly apologised for the hurt and offence they caused.

“The racist tweets – or the fact of racist tweets - highlighted in correspondence following the Zero Waste Scotland campaign were not shared with our central marketing department before the Covid campaign was launched. We are now putting in place measures to ensure that complaints raised about marketing campaigns run by other public sector bodies are shared centrally as a matter of course.”

In a statement on Twitter last week, Ms Godley apologised for a series of offensive tweets.

She said: “I thought being an outspoken comedian meant I could get away with saying anything I wanted and people would accept that and not take it out of context, but that’s completely wrong.

"I have to stand up and own my offensive, hurtful language and apologise.

"They have horrific undertones and I deserve all the criticism that comes my way.”

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