Victoria Wood

Since the mid-1980s, Wood's appearances on stage and television were always eagerly anticipated, whether it was laugh-a-minute stand-up, a beautifully judged dramatic performance in the TV film Housewife, 49 or the canteen sitcom Dinnerladies. The care and craft she lavished on each look and line of dialogue was as meticulous as it was matchless. A shy, isolated child, Wood was born in Prestwich, Lancashire, in May 1953, the youngest of four siblings. Her insurance salesman father was a frustrated writer who made up songs for his office parties and eventually went on to write scripts for Coronation Street. Largely ignored by her parents ("Our house looked like an explosion in an Oxfam shop"), Wood stayed in her bedroom and sought attention as a performer, joining a youth theatre group in Rochdale and teaching herself to play the piano. She also learnt to play the trumpet. Having been considered exceptionally bright at her primary school, Wood lost her way at Bury Grammar School, intimidated by the competition and envious of the more outgoing girls who appeared to be "having a wonderful time". While studying drama at Birmingham University she auditioned for the ITV talent show New Faces, performing a song about a woman contemplating marriage to a man who washes his Cortina more than his neck. Though eliminated in the second round, she was talent-spotted by poet Roger McGough for a revue he took up to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1976. Her first big break was the TV show That's Life!, writing and performing satirical songs loosely inspired by topical events. Her lifelong friendship and collaboration with Julie Walters began in the 1970s when they both appeared in a revue, 'In at the Death', at London's tiny Bush Theatre, for which Wood wrote a sketch. Its success led to the commissioning of Talent, Wood's first full-length play, by the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield. Talent was later filmed by Granada TV, starring Julie Walters as a disillusioned talent-show contestant. The stage version won her the Evening Standard's most promising new playwright award. Granada commissioned two more plays from Wood, and urged her to write a sketch show for herself and Julie Walters, which became Wood and Walters (1981-82) and also featured Roger Brierley with who she would go on to work with again in her later productions in the 1980s and 1990s. In the mid-1980s she was poached by the BBC for her own series, Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV, for which she assembled her own mini-repertory company consisting of Julie Walters, Celia Imrie and Duncan Preston. It was for this show that she also launched the much-loved Acorn Antiques, a low-budget TV soap of such ineptitude it made Crossroads look slick. The spoof was held in such affection that Wood, along with the original cast, was able to sell out the Theatre Royal Haymarket 20 years later with Acorn Antiques: The Musical!, for which she wrote the score. Despite generally favourable reviews and Olivier nominations for best new musical, best actress in a musical (Julie Walters) and best performance in a supporting role in a musical (Celia Imrie), Wood later claimed that the show was a bad idea because she felt it had undermined her credibility as a playwright. Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV ran for two series and also featured Patricia Routledge, Sue Wallace, Deborah Grant, Peter Lorenzelli, Peter Martin, Jim Broadbent and Susie Blake. Wood and Walters worked together again with Celia Imrie, Julie Walters, Anne Reid, Susie Blake and Lill Roughley in 1989 in a series of six playlets for the series named simply 'Victoria Wood' which included an appearance from Joan Sims as well as appearances from Jim Broadbent, Patricia Hodge, Philip Lowrie, William Osborne and Maureen Lipman. Then again on television in 1992, Victoria Wood's All Day Breakfast starred Celia Imrie, Julie Walters, Susie Blake, Anne Reid and also featured Duncan Preston, William Osborne and Philip Lowrie. And yet again in 1994 in Wood's TV film 'Pat and Margaret' which also starred Julie Walters, Duncan Preston, Anne Reid, Deborah Grant, Peter Lorenzelli, Sue Wallace, Roger Brierley, Philip Lowrie and Angela Curran as well as a special appearance from Dame Thora Hird, about the strained reunion of two estranged sisters, one the star of an American TV soap, the other a waitress in a motorway service station. Wood cast herself as the dowdy Margaret, while acknowledging in an interview that she probably had more in common with Pat, a woman "so determined to get on there's no room for anything else". While developing as a dramatist, she continued to do stand-up, nailing the hypocrisies and absurdities of everyday life with stinging wit and whiplash delivery. Her targets were often "people who think a lot of themselves" in whatever field of endeavour. With her cropped hair and androgynous dress sense, Wood cleverly bypassed any gender preference - an unthreatening, even comforting stage presence to the majority. Fellow comedian Simon Fanshawe wrote of her: "The point about Wood is that she makes you feel comfortable and then slips spiky material in under your guard." The commentator Judith Woods wrote in 2007: "Quite simply, Victoria Wood is a performer for grown-ups. She has an everywoman appeal to female viewers, but none of the stridency that traditionally puts off male audiences. She isn't preoccupied with pastiche and celebrity. Real life is her forte, in all its peculiarities." An assiduous student of vintage comedy, Wood was keenly aware of her predecessors, both male and female. She saw what she did in a historical context, citing the likes of Vesta Victoria, Gracie Fields, Max Miller, Hetty King and Ken Dodd, the greats of music hall and variety, as her inspiration. She had no interest in reflecting the often racist, sexist stand-up style of the 1980s. Her more enlightened and sophisticated take on the changes taking place in society prevailed while the unreconstructed male chauvinists withered…