- Three words to describe Victoria Wood? - Three words?
Oh...
Oh, now that's difficult. Erm?
Er...
I have to think of good words.
I could describe her in six words.
- What have other people said? - Hysterical.
Best friend, please.
Funny, real...
daft.
It's true, innit?
Multi-talented phenomenon.
Funny, lower case.
There are too many. I can't give it three.
Funny, upper case.
Funny, funny, funny.
And funny in double extra-large letters.
Vic is the queen.
Very, very funny, very, very intelligent and very down to earth.
I bow. I bow.
Will that do?
So here I am!
If I meet people that don't get her humour or whatever,
I think, "Well, can't really be friends with them."
She is, as a writer, off the wall.
Where's Mrs O? It's only her macaroons that kept me going.
I find myself thinking, "It's just one marvellous joke after another."
My favourite moment in a theatre ever was a Victoria Wood moment.
- I love him really. - She's a hoot, isn't she?
Is it on the trolley?
I think the first words I ever remember Victoria Wood saying
were "shag pile".
Now that's the blue of our Margaret's shower curtain there.
- Where? - Them varicose veins there.
A kind of kaleidoscope, isn't she?
She switches something round and something else wonderful happens.
'It's so long since I'd had a mince pie,
'I suppose I'd forgotten how to eat it.
'Somehow I missed my mouth altogether
'and put it straight in my eye.'
I think it's absolutely fair to say that Victoria changed the comedy landscape.
Different pants for different moods with me. M&S, BHS, C&A, PMT.
Feels like you're meeting somebody who's incredibly bright but could have lived a street away from you.
Thank God she's there. There's somebody funny to laugh at that is, apparently, female.
It never bothered me when you looked like Tommy Cooper.
Really glad I met her. I suppose I should stand up
and bump my head on the microphone, but I'm not going to.
I hope that she knows the world loves her, cos they do.
APPLAUSE
Eh, eh.
I'm meeting a man tonight.
I'm going on a proper date.
He's taking me to a creperie.
We're going to creep in, have a crepe and creep out again.
'I still get muddled up with Pam Ayers.'
Another person stopped me and said, "You were absolutely brilliant."
I thought he said, "You ARE absolutely brilliant." "OK. Thank you so much. "
He said, "You were absolutely brilliant in Mamma Mia!"
I went, "I wasn't in Mamma Mia. That was Julie Walters."
Thank you.
- How self-conscious do you feel when we're doing things like this, when you're...? - Not at all.
But then I'm not the one walking backwards.
Go on, Luce, you can do it!
Eh! How's that? Is that a good 'un?
'I was always comfortable with it.'
I was always took it as a great sign that... Mind that sign.
I took it as a sign that what I was doing was working.
That I was on the telly and people knew who I was.
Ooh, hello!
- They've been signed by you. - They're signed already?
In Liverpool.
- Well, they're very nice, I must say. - Do you like it? - Yes.
I've never understood people who go into show business then complain their privacy's been invaded
by people asking for autographs, cos to me that's part of the job.
Big sign coming up.
Look, if I go out of the photo...
'I don't get recognised a huge amount. I never get hassled.
'Maybe people will look twice because they've seen me on the telly.'
It's a very minimal thing in my case. Big tree stump coming up.
It's not a big thing.
- Thank you. - You're welcome. - Thank you so much. - Bye.
'Ello.
I'm looking for me friend.
Kimberly.
People are lovely, so nice. They used to say, "We really like your work."
Now they say, "We've liked you for years and years."
You think, "You don't have to mention how many years."
Have you seen 'er?
I didn't know whether I could make a career out of it.
I mean, at university, I was a real big flop
and I always had this feeling there was something that I could do.
I couldn't quite nail down what it was, because there was no role model for me, really,
as a woman stand up or even sitting at the piano singing.
There was really nobody else doing that.
So I was very much blundering about in the dark.
# Mum is glad I'm not rough and she loves me enough
# To tell me, twice
# What she doesn't know And I hope it doesn't show
# Is that I hate being nice. #
I think the most important thing about Victoria was that she changed
everything, not just in women's comedy on television,
but in comedy in general on television.
She was the one who broke the grip of the old Footlights tradition.
It had given us a lot. It still does,
but it needed expanding and she was the one who did it.
On her own, actually.
Just coming out of the north like a new, great wave...
a one-person, invading army.
I come out of toilet and he says,
"Eh, scallop face, your skirt's caught up in your knickers at back!"
I said, "Know why?" He says, "Why?"
"Cos that's latest fashion. I read it in a boook."
He says, "What boook?" I said, "Vogue, that's what boook."
"Oh, likely, likely. When do you read Vogue?"
I said, "When I'm in hospital having exploratory surgery."
- He said, "Oh." - He didn't? - He did.
Vic was outside of any of the supposed scenes,
either the Oxbridge scene or the alternative scene.
And, in fact, I later discovered that Vic had come this kind of circuitous route.
Quite similar to Len, actually.
I wasn't like the alternative comics who came up a few years later,
who were very much a band of brothers.
I was just on my own, living in a bedsit in Birmingham and really not knowing at all...
I was clueless, except I did have, you know, some core of self-belief
that I could actually make it work somehow. I didn't know how.
Yes, it's the New Faces Winners Show
with Les Dennis.
When I was at university in Birmingham,
New Faces was shot at the ATV studios in Birmingham
and it was the big talent show to be on.
Victoria Wood. Jess and the Gingerbreads.
New Faces was about people who wanted to get into show business,
people who were in show business that needed television to launch their career a bit further.
It was the one to be on and a friend was a make-up girl on it.
The day I auditioned, there was a queue of people round the block
at the Dolce Vita nightclub where they were holding the auditions
and she put my application form to the top of the pile and so I was able to be seen.
Otherwise I never would have got seen or got on the telly.
This young lady, well, what can you say about someone?
She's just finished at Birmingham University
after gaining an honours degree in drama.
You always used to get huge viewing figures... 17, 18 million a week...
and the impact was like X Factor is now.
Please welcome Victoria Wood.
APPLAUSE
New Faces was actually a wonderful way to catapult her on.
# There's a tin in the office cupboard
# Labelled "Lorraine"
# Because I've gone and get engaged again
# I wonder what they'll give me?
# Money would be ideal
# Probably be something practical
# In stainless steel... #
I thought that was it. I thought, "Sorted!"
You know, I'd been on ATV for three minutes on a Saturday night
and I've won, so really, you know, what's the problem?
Then, a few years later, I'm still sitting in a bedsit thinking,
"Mm? Nothing's happened."
# I'll be back at social security
# Queuing up to be abused
# To be listed
# On a card index
# A singer, slightly used. #
'That's Life! seemed like a big thing, but I was very unenterprising and I didn't really have an agent.'
Although I was on telly every two weeks to an audience of 50 million,
the songs were not particularly interesting, cos they were based on current events
and things Esther asked me to write that were in the news.
I could have used that as a launching pad, but sadly
didn't have the nous to capitalise on this.
# Ever heard of being happy?
# Ever heard of fun?
# Why this wonderful impression of a hot cross bun? #
I first noticed her when she did her first little stage show in London.
She was on stage with a couple of my friends.
I was living in the same house as the friends and they took me along.
And I think it's fair to say that Victoria stood out.
She had this super weapon, of course,
she could write the music and sing it.
- Young people these days turn to each other's private parts... - Out of sheer boredom. - They do.
- In my day, it wasn't the same. - Of course, it wasn't.
Kept myself happy for years with a couple of bobbins and a crochet hook.
'The minute I realised I had found my voice...'
Cos every comedian, every writer, has to have their own voice.
And up until the point that you find your voice, you're really, you know,
you're wandering around in the wilderness, echoing people who've gone before.
It was in '78. I was at the Bush Theatre in Shepherd's Bush.
I was doing a revue that Julie Walters was in and I was just one of the writers.
I didn't understand the humour of the other sketches and then suddenly Vic and Julie
came on and it was total bliss and right up my street.
The big hit of the evening was her saying to me,
"Well, where are you in the menstrual cycle?"
And I said..."Taurus."
And the whole house just came down every night.
It was like somebody banging a gong.
I wrote this sentence and it was constructed in such a way that it was funny,
whereas everything I'd written before was nearly funny.
There's nothing worse than nearly funny. It's painful.
This was properly funny.
We'll do it properly now, shall we?
- Shall we? - Could we do it again? - Could you? Did you write this?
Everything comes down to just that one sketch, meeting Julie in that summer of '78.
So I didn't change so much, as I was in my groove and people started to recognise that.
During the course of that, I found out that we had in fact met before.
She said, "We've met before, you know."
I looked at her and I said, "Were you at Manchester Poly?"
She said, "Yeah. Were you there in a green cardigan?" I said, "Yeah."
And she didn't get in. They've never lived it down.
And I've told everybody. I've told all the press, absolutely everyone.
Till eventually I got a letter from the chancellor, or whatever the head of it's called, I can't remember,
saying, "Please! We are sorry she didn't get in!"
David Leland, who was a theatre director,
who was doing a new play season at The Crucible in Sheffield...
he saw that show at the Bush Theatre with Julie and I, and said to me,
"Have you ever thought of writing a play?" No, I hadn't.
He said, "Why don't you try and write one?" So I wrote one.
And there was a large brown envelope through the letterbox.
There was nothing in the envelope, but written on the back of the envelope was the plot for Talent.
He said, "If you can think of an idea, put it through my letterbox."
I did it in the night so I wouldn't have to talk to him.
He said, "OK, write it." I'd never written a play.
I thought, "That's easy."
I wrote it in three weeks. I never changed it or anything.
We might not win.
No. We might get spotted.
The man at the audition said a BBC producer come in once.
But they don't take girls from offices to be on the television.
They do!
What about Pam Ayers?
I was writing from the heart and I was writing with all that, you know, enthusiasm and energy.
All the plays I wrote after that I put in the bin as I was so self-critical.
But with Talent, I don't think I was...
I thought, "David knows. I'll write it for him, he can say if he likes it or not."
What's the name of the programme?
Wood And Walters. Studio six.
Nope. Sorry. It's not down here.
Wood And Walters came about because we'd done Talent at Granada for Peter Eckersley,
who was head of drama, and he asked me if I wanted to have my own show.
Have you no form of identification?
Oh, show him your birthmark, Julie.
I said, "I don't want to carry a whole show on my own. Can Julie be in it as well?"
And that's... And we sat in a room for a day before anybody thought of the title, Wood And Walters.
- I am Victoria Wood. This is Julie Walters. - Good evening.
- The original title was Two Creatures, Great And Small. - Or Wood Is Thicker Than Walters.
Wood And Walters was like nothing on earth.
Well, it was like some old people's home's day out.
Ancient. I think they must have driven round in a bus saying,
"If you don't like laughing, you know, get on this bus and we'll go to Granada
"and we'll show you some sketches you won't enjoy." It was painful.
"Ooh, I don't know who... Who are they?"
You'd hear a lot of that.
Welcome to Wood And Walters, the comedy show with a difference.
- It's off-beat. - It's zany. - It doesn't get laughs.
And Ted Robins was our warm-up man and he was so desperate...
I mean, he could only have been a boy then, cos this is 30 years ago.
Or 35 years ago.
He actually dropped his trousers
and showed his bare bottom to an old lady.
She'd been through two world wars and a depression.
It'd take more than Ted's bum to make her crack a smile.
Before we go any further, I'd like to say there's no canned laughter.
- But we have been promised it will be here before the end of the programme. - Yeah.
The show was successful. The series was successful.
But it was hard doing it in those circumstances.
- What does a producer do? - He comes down at the end and tells you how good it was.
I knew it wasn't really very good and so I was a bit, you know, distressed about it.
I had a very different set-up at the BBC, because I had Geoff Posner,
who produced and directed, who had a very great grip on the whole thing.
So I had a very, very solid base from which to work.
Happy with your wash?
- Yes. - How about close up?
Yes!
I went to visit her in Preston in this lovely little house she had,
and sitting on the floor was Julie Walters.
I introduced myself to her.
The three of us read all of series one of As Seen On TV
and I just had trouble in keeping a straight face.
Did you go and see Macbeth?
Uh! It wasn't a patch on Brigadoon.
There was some terrible woman who kept washing her hands, saying she'd never get them clean.
I felt like shouting out, "Try Swarfega!"
The quality of the writing was just absolutely extraordinary, even in those days.
Right from the word go, Victoria was writing all of those wonderful
little phrases and sentences and rhythms that she's really famous for.
- We walked out in the end. - Why?
Someone said "womb".
- No. - Mm. I said to Col, "Get your duffel!
"£2 on a box of Quality Street and someone says womb."
I just learned in the interim what you needed to do to put a good sketch show together.
- Is Tony still in the SAS? - No, he left. - Well, you have to be
incredibly tough to stick it. The violence and...
Oh, and then of course the balaclava was so itchy.
I was aware of Victoria of course
from New Faces and for That's Life! and so on.
I liked what she did, but it wasn't until As Seen On TV
and me finding that that I became this sort of obsessive, stalking fan
who has now learnt virtually every script she's ever written.
- Our next-doors had sex again last night. - Not again!
I mean, I like a joke,
but that's twice this month!
I could not think what the noise was.
I thought our central heating had come on a month early.
Then I heard someone shout, "Oh, don't bother, Ken! I'll do it meself!"
Most sketch shows these days,
it seems to be a requirement they're hit and miss in the listings.
But I don't think there's any misses with Victoria.
It was always gem after gem.
How's Plymouth looking?
Either way, Alan, either way.
It's on hold. I feel personally that Plymouth could be another Exeter.
That's interesting.
I'm keeping an ear to the ground with Plymouth.
I think what the regional boys tend to forget...
- Tim. - Alan.
Just coffee, thank you.
Yah, the regional boys...
Yes, just coffee for me, too, please.
You never know how anything's going to really be received,
but, yeah, I mean, we just knew how funny the sketches were.
No matter what, we knew that they were really funny
and if Wood And Walters was successful, this had to be.
Have you seen it?
- Erm... - Have you seen it on the trolley?
Just two coffees. No sweet.
Two coffees. No sweet.
That's it. What was I...? The Isle of Wight.
Have you seen it on the trolley?
No. Yes, thank you.
Is it a sorbet?
Just two coffees, thank you.
Now, Plymouth...
Can you point at it?
There's a degree of surreality in that.
It's these two worlds which are not meeting one another.
On paper, that must have looked...
"I don't know that this is terribly funny. " The moment she does it...
And if you listen to the lines, there's nothing there really to hang your hat on.
But it's priceless.
We just want the old cafe... coffee.
I'll handle this, Tim, thanks very much.
- Coffee? - Coffee.
Is it on the trolley?
So many things are in there that I think
now seem like they've always been done,
but I don't think you could trace them back past her, you know.
I think she did relish the telly format and use it.
And, later on, we have the British premiere of the rarely-performed
Spanish opera by Leopoldo Gutierrez, Miseria En Una Lavanderia.
I'm wasted here, really, aren't I?
I was reading for a different character, in fact.
I was reading to play Celia Imrie's daughter in Acorn Antiques.
Then she gave me these monologues.
Hello, just time for a quick weather check.
I'm afraid the promised heat wave never arrived.
I was quite relieved actually because, whenever it's hot,
a lot of the girls here come to work in sleeveless tops
and some of them are very overweight and I get quite depressed
having to look at their enormous arms all day long.
I started reading one. I couldn't get through them - so funny.
Of course, obesity is a tremendous problem for a lot of people,
a lot of weak-willed, self-indulgent guzzlers, that is.
Anyway, the weather.
# Shock, shock, horror, horror... #
I've had a lot of very lovely letters asking me where I buy
the various tops and blouses I wear to the studio day by day.
Well, obviously I can't reply to you all personally,
so I'll just take this opportunity to say to those who took the trouble to write in,
mind your own business.
# The female of the species
# Is more deadly than the male. #
I think it's just the strain of having someone flapping their hands
over my shoulder like a demented chicken.
And now, disestablishmentarianism in Krakatoa, east of Java.
Do that without chipping your nail varnish!
'I just looked up and smiled'
and they started laughing. It was the most wonderful feeling.
Vic had got it absolutely right...
this monstrous person.
It was not hard to do.
We'd like to apologise to viewers in the north.
It must be awful for them.
That's, what, about 12 words or something?
Fabulous. I think it says so much about,
you know, how we feel, how the media treats us.
What the south actually thinks of us.
And yet we can all laugh at it. We can all find that hilarious.
It's really, really, on so many levels, hilarious and clever.
# Pretend to be northern
# Just smile and act dense
# Just sing something northern
# It doesn't have to make sense
# Make a list of northern cliches
# And you can't go wrong
# Put in any order
# You've got a northern song. #
There was a lot of criticism when the series first came out I remember
and the northernness of it was one of those.
# Wigan, a Blackpool tram
# Brass band, butties in your hands
# Whippets and next-door's man. #
It was a very unfair criticism because she spoke with the language that she grew up with,
and she also addressed people in a way that they perhaps had never been addressed before.
- By the thump, Minnie Colwell, you take the barm cake! - Oh, leave her be.
You 'ave a chip on your shoulder that big, Jackson's chippie couldn't come up wi' vinegar.
Put a pikelet in it, and you might hear summat to your own advantage.
I don't want to be a professional northerner, but it is hugely important to me
that I am from somewhere and it is somewhere that has its own identity
and it is somewhere that has a huge percentage of comedians, actually.
Liverpool and Lancashire has the most, probably.
That gave her access of course to a whole range of experience
of life, of accents, of class,
that added so much colour to the entire picture,
which had been rather provincial before that.
Me dad was in the band.
Will he 'eck as like!
She manages to touch everybody's life by making observations
that might come from the north in her, but which are universally applicable.
Well, can I join?
Well, boys?
Shall we have a woman in the Associated Fettlers and Warp and Wefter Justice Silver Band?
No!
Sorry, love.
No, fair enough.
Is she from the north? Yes, she is.
Is she a northern-style comic?
No. She's a comedian.
My mother, like a lot of mothers in the 1950s, used sweets as a reward.
If you were good, did your jobs, you got your sweets.
If you did dry-stone walling, you got Maltesers.
She was just such a breath of fresh air, really,
because it was like, you kind of looked at her and went,
"Oh, hurrah! Someone normal's on the telly."
It ended up in a bedroom with a man who owned a DIY shop.
He ripped off his clothes, said, "What would you like me to do?"
"Really, I'd like you to insulate the loft and lag the hot-water tank."
Anybody who might have thought that to be a girl comedian,
you had to be sort of just like Goldie Hawn,
you had to sort of be dim and blonde and perky...
Victoria Wood...is blonde, actually, and perky, but she's far from dim.
Ursula Andress was 42. Patricia Hodge was 46.
Barbara Cartland was 103.
What am I talking about? Yes, late motherhood.
She does deal in kind of...
In real life and the comedy of the absurdity of real life.
There's nothing in her humour that says, "Look how clever I am".
It's about, "I've spotted this and you've spotted this and we've all spotted this".
You can't be an observational comic without an observational audience,
or they wouldn't know what you were talking about.
You say something and everyone goes, "Ah, I've always thought that."
I was just the one that said it, that was all.
Do you know, I've scoured this store from top to bottom.
Can I find a side-winding thermal body belt? Can I...
What did you want one for?
Excuse me. I think you'll find there's Spam on that.
Nobody writes sketches like her.
Because in that short space of time you really get who the person is
and what is being said about them, and people recognise them instantly.
- That gippy kidney. - Flared up?
Ooh, I'll say. It's like being continually poked.
- Can you imagine that? - No.
This is somebody who writes, who does her own shopping.
Oh, this is ridiculous!
Can I crash by? I'm a diabetic.
There's no exclusivity to her humour.
But it's not dumbed down either.
There's a real gift
to reaching out to everyone.
A small mineral water and an orange squash, please.
Water and squash down the end by the trays. Tea, coffee?
You've a look of Eva Braun, did you know?
It's something that politicians would kill for.
- What about those Dublin prawns? - Never touch prawns. Do you know,
they hang around sewage outlet pipes,
treading water with their mouths open.
They love it!
Aren't prawns an aphrodisiac?
I wouldn't put it past them.
Those ones where it was her and Victoria, with Julie Walters,
when they're just the pair of them in various situations,
that's when there's such a magic.
Our Christmas pudding is down there somewhere,
and you can be sure we shall dig till we get it.
And if I find my husband as well, that's all to the good.
How about you, Mum?
Is Hitler's nightly bombardment getting you down?
No! The blackout, rationing and being in daily danger of death
have been a real tonic to me.
Victoria and Julie make a terrific double act.
By God!
If her bum were a bungalow, she'd never gerra mortgage on it.
She's let it drop.
I'll say. Never mind knickers.
She needs a safety net.
Julie is such a comedian that Victoria gets a chance to play the straight man.
You can pick up a lot of extra laughs as a straight man.
- You have to clench those buttocks. - Do yer?
She'll never ger hers clenched.
It'd take two big lads and a wheelbarra'.
There is no doubt that Julie brings something really special to Victoria's work
and Victoria writes something really special for Julie to do.
They understand each other. They just have an amazing chemistry.
No, sorry, sorry.
The black ones. They're a flat lace-up.
Beg pardon?
Well, those aren't flat.
Flatter now.
Victoria is somehow Captain Sensible
compared to...mad Walters.
They're in the window.
Are they?!
We think we've got hens in the skirting board.
There's hens in the skirting board!
Yes. That is...
I can't imagine how that...
If you're writing a shoe-shop sketch,
it pings into your head, "I'll say that she says there's hens in the skirting board."
She knows what Julie's capable of.
She has complete respect for her and the same is true of Julie.
She knows that whatever Vic writes it'll be wonderful to perform,
great fun and just clever and good.
You've been looking at double-glazing?
Cheap double-glazing, Joan.
- With emphasis on the cheap rather than the glazing? - Absolutely. So...
So in effect, we don't have to spend £3,000 or £4,000 or £5,000 keeping our homes draft free.
- No, so... - So how do we go about it?
I'm sorry. Could you just move away.
Your breath smells.
All good, sort of, comedy duos have this telepathy. It just works.
And that's the magic in it, really.
It doesn't do sometimes to be too over-analytical about why something works.
It's just lovely to accept it and say, "It does, doesn't it?"
This is the highlight of the holiday as far as I'm concerned.
A two-day course in simple mountaineering.
It's a marvellous way for single people to get to know one another,
because in a life and death situation like this
you're totally dependent on your climbing partner.
Marjorie, I'm coming up!
OK.
If Marjorie were to let her concentration lapse for just one second, I could literally...
Well...
- That's it. Happy holidays. - Bye.
There's a connection.
It seems there's always like arrows through their hearts, because,
whether it's being absolutely over the top, side-splitting comedy
or the most unbearable, heartbreaking tragedy,
they seem to have an understanding,
both of them, of what's required of the other.
The same things made us laugh.
The same people made us laugh.
And so there was already a kind of...
There were short cuts all the time with us
and we made one another laugh.
And, yeah, we just got on.
The fact that we were together in '78
and that was such a seminal year for me,
and this year when we'd finished filming the special
and we went over to see Talent,
which was my first play that she and I did on the television.
We went to see it... It just had the theatre production in London.
And to have been filming with her that day
and to be sitting watching that play with her, with two girls
playing our parts, you know, two girls of 25.
And it felt really special.
I felt really fortunate that we had worked all that time.
And she's had an absolutely brilliant career.
And I just felt, you know,
it was just a lucky thing that we were friends all that time.
Lady with the split ends, can I have your question?
Who are you anyway?
Shouldn't you be with the people from Guildford? I recognise you now.
Thought I got a whiff of Napisan coming across.
Yes, my friend's here.
Yes, Miss Julie Walters. Star of Educating Rita, Typhoo One Cup.
She does have to go and work with other people, obviously.
But, you know, I hope that we'll always do something at some point.
That's up to her though, you see. Cos she writes it.
It's no wonder this place is empty.
It came as one page.
I saw it very clearly.
I knew how far it had to be between the kitchen door and the table.
I knew that was the nub of the gag.
And on paper, it looked a very, very ordinary...
funny, but ordinary... sketch.
We thought, "Will it work?" It made us laugh cos it went on and on and on.
That was the gist of the joke really.
Then we did the tech run and the crew just...
Well...
If you watch very carefully, you can see me biting my lip.
Just knew it was a very special sketch.
It makes me laugh.
I don't watch my sketches, but I watch that cos I'm not in that one.
The classic soup line, you know.
Two soups, please.
Two soups is just...
- Two soups. - That's two soups.
Quite brilliant.
And it does make me roar. I love watching it.
Ready to order, sir?
Madam?
- Jane? - Er, yes.
What's the soup of the day, please?
I'll just go and find out.
- What time's your train? - 25 to.
Oh! Well, that's not too bad.
Ready to order, sir?
It came from two things. One, lunch with Julie in a hotel in Morecambe.
There was a very ancient waitress, but nothing funny happened. She was just an ancient waitress.
Then I was in another hotel and saw two people getting very agitated
cos they couldn't get hold of the waitress and she didn't bring the thing they wanted.
Those two things lodged in my head and turned into a sketch.
We'll have two soups.
Two soups.
One...
..soup.
And...
another...
..soup.
Along with, you know, the parrot sketch on Monty Python,
what have you, Two Soups is a real comedy classic. I adore that.
Two soups.
I don't believe this.
These are empty.
Waitress!
Oh, God preserve us!
Look, we'll have to go.
Oh, you must have been quite peckish.
If ever I have soup... "Oh, yeah! Will it be two?" "No! I just want one."
When I was rehearsing Acorn Antiques, The Musical,
I was at the counter of the cafeteria in the rehearsal room with Sir Trevor Nunn
who blithely ordered two soups then everybody round him burst out laughing.
He had no idea what they were laughing at.
Hope you enjoyed your meal, sir.
No tip.
Bastards!
I think Victoria is supremely good at sort of
puncturing the pomposity of any characters that...
Kitty, for instance, was a perfect example of that.
This wasn't my idea.
In fact, had it been up to me,
I'd have been on me second cream sherry in Kidderminster by now.
Pomposity must always be pricked.
And she does that in lovely, lovely style.
First day I met her she said...
She said, "I'm a radical feminist lesbian."
I thought, "What would the Queen Mum do?"
Kitty was just so cleverly written.
Cos on very many levels that was a good attack on women
who are just a bit too full of their own air.
And I think she's a genius when it comes to that kind of writing.
How's this for a sentence?
"I shall wait to see myself on TV before I do any more.
Fortunately, I've just had my TV mended."
Well, I say "mended". A shifty looking youth in plimsolls came
and waggled me aerial and wolfed my Gypsy Creams.
But that's the comprehensive system for you.
Provincial snobbery and la-di-da snobbery.
All the variations of that
are things that she punctures relentlessly.
So posh people tend to get a bit more of a drubbing,
but they can take it.
How do you like it in the country?
- Very much. - Not too quiet?
No. There's always something going on.
See those big brown things outside the window.
- Trees? - That's it.
Round about April they all get sort of green sort of leafy things on.
Then round about the end of October they all drop off. It's riveting.
A lot of comedy nowadays and a lot of comedians are quiet aggressive,
quite abrasive and Victoria isn't.
She's observational.
She can poke fun at things you do yourself,
but you don't feel that she's being remotely cruel,
even though a lot of what she does is quite barbed.
It must be nice to be part of a community.
Oh, it is. Everyone's so friendly. I cut my leg last month on a mantrap that someone had left out.
It's a beautifully crafted piece of farm machinery.
If you ever get the chance, pop your leg in one.
I was just staggering along the road, bleeding fairly profusely,
and a tractor came by. I called out, "Is this the way to the hospital?"
He said, "No, the other direction." You know.
I don't think Victoria has ever lost what she originally had as a writer.
What she had done is develop, to the extent that it's sometimes hard to see back to the centre.
There's this central palace of Victoria's talent
and she keeps on adding more outbuildings.
And so the whole complex gets harder to analyse.
But holding it all together is the ear.
She can hear everything. She can hear us now.
I've been putting off this confrontation with you, Petrina, which is not like me.
- Have you heard the expression "procrastination is the theft of time"? - Not really.
No!
This is you, Petrina. You're not cultured.
I was humming Vivaldi before I had my first slingbacks.
The thing about Vic's writing is...
I'm sure she would be OK for me to say this.
It's almost like music,
and every note must be sung.
Do you know Vivaldi?
Ain't he the Four Seasons?
Well, I prefer to think of them in the original,
the Quattro Formaggi.
It's as if she keeps flipping you
from word to word and laugh to laugh.
And I think that's part of the joy of it,
because nowadays you get so little really good use of the English language.
I don't like upsetting people.
Like the woman who brought back the cerise batwing.
I didn't like playing on her paranoia
and taking advantage of her physical defects,
but if someone has body odour that could strip pine, they should be told.
It always seems to me that it's kind of incredibly well thought through.
It's not that she's just gone, "Oh, that'll do.
That custard cream will do." Or, you know, "That Garibaldi will do."
It's got to be a Gypsy Cream or whatever it is.
Only last night my husband said to me,
"Sandra, where is the laughing fairy
"that could crochet a crinoline, lady toilet-roll cover
"whilst imitating Kiri Te Kanawa?"
You're trying to deliver the best thing to the audience,
so why would you not try as hard as you can?
Why would you not sit and chew your pencil
and look out at your bird feeder and think,
"What is the very w...? What is the word? There is a word?
One word will be funny. One word won't be funny. "
And that's what I'll do
to try and make it good for people who have paid their licence fee
or paid to sit in the theatre
or paid to come and watch me tell a joke. I want it to be right.
Oh! I think of myself at your age.
I was a sponge for culture.
Folk dancing one minute, fingering a Henry Moore the next.
Your whole attitude is a baffler, Petrina.
Though why anyone would want to buy an angora roll neck
from someone whose nipples aren't even level, I don't know!
Some words are funny and some words aren't funny, and some words,
like "custard cream", have been devalued over the years.
I blame myself for that, cos I think it was me
that first landed on custard cream as being a hilarious biscuit name.
But my other wish is that I don't fall into biscuit territory
and I don't fall into just making jokes about custard creams and Vimto and Horlicks.
I'm always trying to change what I do and make it different.
Hello, Mrs O. How's widowhood treating you?
One mustn't grumble.
I sometimes think being widowed is God's way of telling you to come off the pill.
Still the same Mrs O!
I was doing Pirates Of Penzance in Manchester
and we used to obsessively go home after the show
and watch the series on video.
And we then had a competition to see who could get in a line from one of the sketches,
that we used to repeat all the time, into the show on stage.
And I actually won the competition
when I finished the Pirates Of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan by saying,
"I think it's time for tonic wine and spongy fingers, and a delicious home-made bhaji."
This calls for some tonic wine and a spongy finger.
Yes, Mrs O. I should jolly well think it does.
Spongy fingers are funny. How did she know that?
- I thought Acorn Antiques was hilarious. - I love it.
It was so Crossroads, wasn't it?
I love it so much.
Yes, that's much better.
Never fails to make me smile.
See? I smile talking about it.
Ooh, that sounds like the postman.
That looks like an important letter.
What you see is...take six. I don't think they managed a proper take.
Here we are then.
Well, it is quite...
When I think about it, I think of really great lines like,
"Oh, Mrs Overall, I could smell your onion bhajis a mile off."
I used to show everything to my husband then and I showed him that
and he said, "That's the only thing I don't quite get."
I said, "Trust me. I know this will work."
Hello, Mrs O. I thought I'd bring my own coffee cup down today.
You know, it still tastes a little bit odd.
What sort of a little bit odd?
Oh, I don't know. Almost as if someone was trying to kill me.
Oh! Babby, you are an old silly billy.
- Get back! - Well, you see, I am the majority shareholder in Acorn Antiques since Berta's amnesia.
If I were to die, that would certainly suit Cousin Jerez.
I was in a soap opera in Scotland many years ago
called Take The High Road and so the whole wobbly set thing...
I've been there.
Whatever was that terrible bang?
Cousin Jerez slamming the door.
The Spaniards may have enormous onions,
but their manners leave a lot to be desired.
I was asked to play this really naff actress in a really ghastly soap.
And I thought,
"I think this is what she thinks I really am...
"some terrible sort of rep actress who's hopeless."
No! I mean, Celia... That is a brilliant performance,
and it's because she plays it so straight that it is funny.
Babs and Miss Berta, could I have a word?
Well, if it's to ask me for another job for my untrustworthy cousin, Jerez, then the answer's no.
This last little escapade cost me £32,
not to mention apologising to every Asian grocer between here and Manchester.
No, it's not that.
A lot of the sublime comedy in Acorn Antiques depends on the way it's shot.
The camera angles have to be exactly right if you're trying to prove that they're wrong, for example.
Everything is mistimed and that takes timing.
Well, I know Miss Babs. Is she getting a bit fractious?
I promised I'd pop up and read them a bit of Simone de Beauvoir.
Yes, do clear away, Mrs O.
In fact, you may as well clear away the whole darn shop.
I do remember the cameramen thinking the sketch show
was really polished and good,
but what's suddenly happened now when they're all going wrong?
My life seems completely grey, bleak and pointless.
Well, yes, sometimes that's God's way of getting you to enjoy Gardeners' World.
We never did it in front of the audience because
when a person stands up, the natural tendency of a cameraman
is to go up with the person, and you can't stop them doing it.
It's just automatic.
Who's the sole beneficiary now?
That's the problem.
We met in the blackout in 1943.
There was a young stage designer, who I remember,
just as we were about to start,
ran through the shop and stopped the psych that was...
The whole street was going...
Gently actually. You know, moving.
And she didn't understand that that was supposed to happen.
Which is very darling. But what do you say?
How do you say in the English,
"to marry you"?
Well, that's not quite the correct jargon, but I do get your drift.
I'm sorry, Jerez, it's not possible.
Oh! Agh!
What are you saying to me?
Once they realised what it was, people just went mad about it.
Oh, Mrs O! Can't you see we're busy?
But this is important.
This is important.
Yes. "THIS is important." I said that, didn't I?"
People loved it and loads of letters...
Yeah, and someone said there was a Mrs Overall fan club and things like that.
I think mainly gay men!
I'm grey now, Mr Clifford,
very grey indeed.
Right up until 1947, my hair was red,
as red as a London bus.
I wasn't aware that it was being played in gay clubs and things like that.
I didn't really twig that at all, cos I didn't go to gay men's clubs then,
or now actually.
I went to Heaven, which was the most extraordinary experience,
and Mrs Overall was playing in massive...
Sort of projected on to the wall.
She's choking on her own macaroon!
Get the family doctor!
I didn't like to bother Mr Kenneth. He was having his breakfast.
What was it, muesli?
'Twas it muesli?
You absolutely believed that this woman in her mid-30s,
as she must have been then, was that old woman.
The lumpy tights and...
There's an episode where she started up a health and sauna thing.
Enjoy your swim.
Just leave your antiques in the cubicle. They'll be perfectly safe.
Crossroads had decided it had a leisure centre.
It was a motel, but suddenly it had a leisure centre and a lake.
Whenever Crossroads went into some mad fantasy world, I'd do it in Acorn Antiques.
- Berta! Feel better for your run? - I certainly do! Running does keep you fit and could be
a considerable contributory factor in reducing heart disease.
Oh, the leotard, yeah.
That was a time when people did laugh.
Vic and I said... She said, "Don't let them see it until you go in."
Because it was awful
and it was a terrible sagging gusset and a sweatband.
We knew, because we'd seen in the wardrobe
that Julie was going to wear a lime-green leotard.
It's fine if you see it hanging up.
It's not fine if Julie then suddenly stumbles on to the set
with her, you know, tights bulging with varicose veins.
It was the concertina in the crotch area
that still makes me laugh to this day.
Here we are.
A nice tray of decaffeinated coffee,
low-fat milk and sugar-free sugar.
Goodness, how healthy.
Oh, I enjoyed myself.
How was the aerobics class?
Oh, I enjoyed myself.
And of course the fatal thing was that Victoria, Duncan and I
were sitting altogether on a two-seater sofa, which is fatal,
because if one person went, you could feel the other person next door.
We got into terrible trouble actually.
It was like laughing in church.
A supportive brassiere to prevent chaffing
and plenty of individual attention from a qualified instructor.
It sounds ideal.
It was only the exercises I didn't take to.
I can remember Geoff Posner shouting from the studio, "Tell them to stop laughing."
How many people tune in every evening to hear that oh-so-familiar music?
About 54.
But what goes on behind the scenes? What don't the public see?
It was a lovely vessel to be able to kind of bridge those two worlds.
That brilliant subversion of having Julie play the actress playing Mrs Overall as well,
and that's a whole other character, and that was lovely.
The first time you've seen that kind of thing done.
We're both rather gutsy ladies.
Very determined.
Strong moral sense.
We've both had rather difficult lives.
A certain amount of personal loss.
And they're both very warm and very giving.
Bless you for that, my darling.
She's been this kind of arthritic, crazy, shaky lady making bhajis,
now developed, in the behind the scenes one, into this goddess.
So the famous lumpy tights and the varicose veins...
that's just something that goes on with the make-up, is it?
It's not boom, boom, kssh!
There's lines that you just pass over and you're like, what?!
- Turn to Derek. "That was the immigration authority, Derek." - Tssh.
Are you going to do that? Because I'll leave a gap.
No. It's my tooth again.
"Are you going to do that? Cos I'll leave a gap."
And all that kind of thing. It's fantastic.
- Look at how the press treated poor Yorkie. - Fergie. - Fergie.
Look what they did to poor Yorkie.
And he goes, "Fergie," and she goes, "Fergie."
Dear Paul, I'm a huge...
Huge star.
"I just said to him, 'I was wearing leather shorts before George Formby had a ukulele.'"
Mrs Overall, we could smell your bhajis a mile away.
And ultimately it breeds geekiness, you know.
So many of things within those As Seen On TVs
that were kind of forefathers of The Office
and when she used to do those little mini-documentaries.
May I ask what you're doing here?
We've come about the test-tube babies and that.
We want a test-tube baby.
Why? Are there problems?
We've only got a maisonette, so a little tiny test-tube one...
They grow to a normal size.
They're conceived in the test tube.
We'll never both fit in.
There's just something very different about the tone of it,
but it was one of the first times it was...
Well, before The Office she was doing that kind of fly on the wall,
kind of following someone round, giving them enough rope to hang themselves with.
'I've got everything else...
'suede coat, two-speed hammer drill and all I need now is Mr Right.'
I'm back.
Pamela Twill is 47.
She's never been married.
She's never been engaged.
She's never been to a bowling alley with anyone called Raymond.
She pinched the attitude of the producers and the directors.
The language they spoke in. The portentousness of documentary.
"This is truth."
I found Jesus in 1969 while out camping.
I like to do evangelical work wherever possible,
telephone-deodorising business permitting.
Hello, would you like to be friends with Jesus at all?
- Not really, thank you. - Thank you very much.
I think that a lot of what of Victoria does,
I mean, does have a sort of tinge of tragedy and sadness about it.
But I think that's because actually very funny comedy is actually appalling sad at the same time.
Two eggs and a bit of plain flour.
Bit of comedy. Ooh, bit of tragedy.
You just follow your instinct and follow your story and put your characters together
and if they're rounded characters they're going to have at least two strands in them.
- That's nice. - Yeah, it's nice, is that.
Oh, that's nice.
That's very nice.
Now that is nice.
Yes, it is nice that, you're right.
There is pathos in it. The pathos of the passing of time.
The pathos of the thwarting of achievement. It's all in here.
She never forgets what she might have been
if she had not been talented and that's the secret of great talent.
I suppose I'm aware of the people who don't have chances in life.
Who are stuck, maybe, in a situation.
Those are the things that I always want to put into my work as well, as well as the comedy.
Chrissy is 20.
She's a champion long-distance swimmer.
In three weeks' time, if the tides and the weather are right,
Chrissy plans to swim the Channel.
The Swim The Channel one is heartbreaking as well as being achingly funny.
But it must have had an impact on what I was going to do later on.
Where it's OK to be sad within.
My coach is Mrs Hannigan.
I don't know where Mr Hannigan's got to.
Push with those hands! Push!
She's good, cos when you get really tired and want to stop, she keeps you going.
Completely unforgettable, you know, and hilarious.
Hilarious and sad at the same time, that's hard to pull that off.
- Night, Dad. - Night, dear.
It's the night before your daughter swims the Channel. Any misgivings?
I don't think so. Have we, Cliff?
No. No, she's as strong as an ox.
You'll be in the backup boat, presumably?
Well, no, actually Joan and I are popping down to London for the day.
You know, sort of day out shopping.
The girl swimming the Channel
broke your heart.
Are you worried about tomorrow?
Well, I am in away because, er, I've never swum such a long way
and some of it's in the dark and I don't really like the dark.
And if I do get to French coast, I don't talk French very well, so...
I don't do French. I do woodwork.
But I know a few bits.
"Bonjour" and "aujourd'hui".
Do you think you'll make it?
I don't know. I'll do double prayers tonight anyway.
Well, I haven't seen it since it was on, but I do remember it is a bit sad.
There's no support vessel, no officials, nobody.
Chrissy's entirely alone. Are you still going to go, Chrissy?
Yeah, I think so. I might as well.
My friend Maria is in Kidderminster today so I haven't got anybody to play with anyway.
What about food and drink?
Well, I've got a sandwich box, so I'll think they'll stay dry,
and I've got some little milkshakes in cartons.
I think they'll be all right.
I can put me duffle bag round me neck like this.
Well, what about finding the French coast?
I think I'll find it all right, thank you.
I came fourth in geography. 81%.
- What time is it? - Er, 7.55.
Five to eight. Off I go then.
That was eight days ago and Chrissy hasn't yet reached land.
No-one seems to know where she is.
And the sight of her swimming out to sea on her own,
I think is really, really sad.
What's sadder, I have to say, is the fact that we broke for lunch
at that point and somebody was supposed to shout out to her,
"Victoria, we've broken for lunch."
And we all ran off to the catering wagon and I said, "Where's Vic?"
And somebody said, "Oh, God!"
Nobody said cut. I was in the dark, drifting downstream.
And somebody went, "Oh, hang on. Cut!"
Oh, I'm sure she'll turn up eventually.
Slow but sure, that's our Chrissy.
Yeah, she's probably just swimming about looking for a nice beach with ice creams and donkeys.
You know how kids are.
What I really admired about her in that was that she was prepared
to look absolutely dreadful for the sake of comedy.
And I think there are actually very few women that are prepared to do that.
He said, "Do you wear a bikini?" I said, "Oh, come on."
I said, "I didn't take my coat off on a beach till I was 37."
I did feel very insecure about being fat. It really bothered so many people and it bothered me.
- Can I help you? - I just wondered if you had these in a 14?
You what?!
This is a boutique, not the elephant house.
Eh, Eileen! We've got another fatso in!
You know, that was always my label.
I was fat or plump or overweight.
It was always mentioned in anything that was ever written about me,
which I found very distressing.
I felt ashamed of it, but I couldn't actually get to grips with doing anything about it.
I don't really suit green.
I shouldn't think you suit much, do you? A body like that.
I was going to do a photo shoot with Julie when we did Wood And Walters
and I remember being in the make-up room with Julie
and the woman phoned up from the TV Times or whatever it was.
And she was going to get some lovely clothes. She said, "What are your measurements?"
So I gave my measurements and she said, "I'll call you back."
And she put the phone down and about ten minutes later she phoned
and said, "Oh, Victoria, do you wear kaftans?"
And that was all she could think of, cos I was just not acceptable,
cos I wasn't a size ten or 12.
I didn't fit into anything that she could imagine me wearing. And so I was always being...
I was treated terribly badly by costume people in those early days.
# We congratulate you on losing weight
# Don't get cocky, baby.
# You're gonna be back next month
# We'd say six days grace before you stuff your face
# Don't get cocky, baby
# You're gonna be back next month. #
I used to sit as a teenager.
I had a room with a telly and a piano in it and I just sat in there.
And I was always imagining myself on a stage,
but I didn't do that for anybody else. I just did that on my own.
I think when you are shy there's something very attractive
about putting yourself in a situation where you're comfortable
and where you're in charge
and where you're communicating with people.
I think shy people often feel that they're not getting across.
People aren't understanding them,
cos they don't have the social graces to be able to hold a conversation easily.
Whereas if you're a stand-up comic, you're completely in charge.
You've thought of the things to say
and people have got to sit down and listen to you.
That's why there are so many social misfits who are now comedians.
Cos it just works for us.
Before I'd ever seen Victoria on television
I bumped into her in the odd hotel with Rowan.
And here would be this slightly...
Two nervous Northerners circling each other
and being vaguely polite and slightly socially dysfunctional.
And then what's incredible is when you see Victoria out there
with all this extraordinary confidence and variety and acting,
and I'm so intrigued by the contrast between who she is in real life
and then what she can do.
One of the hardest jobs in this business
is walking out on to a stage, on your own,
and to hold an audience night after night
for two, two-and-a-half, three hours.
That is the sign of an absolutely extraordinary professional.
A comedian, you're trying to make people make a noise.
You know, it's hard. You've got to provoke something in them
that they want to go, "Ha-ha-ha!"
I had quite a few years where I would just think,
"They don't get it. I'm not doing it properly.
"I'm boring. I'm really boring."
And I found that upsetting.
I started at the piano, just singing.
And then I would talk a little bit between the songs and then...
I stood up, but I would only stand up in the crook of the piano,
cos that seemed like a protection.
And then I went to a radio mike, but in my hand,
so I had something to hold on to.
And then, eventually, I ended up,
not only with no piano, but with no visible mike.
Just a radio mike in my hair with nothing.
But it took me a long time to get that freedom.
APPLAUSE
If I knew what made a great stand-up, I'd bottle it.
She has great faith in her own ability.
Tremendous confidence, which you have to have.
You have to have when you're stood there doing gags.
I've never been to casualty before, but I think, "It's all right.
"I've seen ER on the television."
I think as soon as I get there, they'll have me on a stretcher.
They'll run at me. They'll be cutting up the sides of my trousers.
Cos they do that in ER all the time.
Even if someone's only looking for the antenatal clinic, "Oh, they're on me!"
It's an extraordinary thing to see someone stand up there
in front of all those people and do their stuff.
It's absolutely terrifying, I imagine.
I said, "Oh, I've got this really bad pain."
"Where?" "Well, sort of here."
She said, "Oh, abdominal. I'll put 'leg', I can't spell abdominal."
Anyone that can go and sell out the Albert Hall
for 15 nights in a row,
that's gotta be something.
And I'm next to this really, really mad, rough-looking woman
with no teeth who's out of her head on something.
And she keeps looking at me going, "Eh-eh, Pam Ayers! Eh-eh!"
She still managed to, kind of, draw everyone in
and give what I would consider to be kind of quite an intimate,
sort of friendly performance,
which I think is so hard to do in a massive barn like that.
It is just energy. It's like a force field
that you wrap round them and keep them with you.
And that's why it's quite tiring to do.
And she's knocking something back out of a bottle, something purple.
I think probably meths. I'm guessing not Ribena Toothkind.
I noticed that, when I was
at the Albert Hall seeing her live,
that her appeal went
right across the board.
Youngsters to grandmas.
And if you've got that appeal, you are winning the battle.
All comedians want to be liked and it's a way of making friends.
You make friends that night.
I mean, I think that's why so many comedians have an entourage
because they need to carry on that feeling.
When they come off stage, they need it to carry on
and they need to have a drink or they need to take something
that keeps that high going.
It's a big high, but the minute the curtain's down,
the lights are off, it's over. It's very sudden.
You know, "wah!" They're laughing. Then they're not.
Comedians often, they do suffer from that dark side.
There's a melancholia, depression. We seem to split into two groups.
A lot of comedians suffer from depression.
And there's a very jolly bunch of comedians who play golf.
I'm in the depression side myself,
but I think that's better than golf.
At least with depression,
you don't have to wear those terrible check trousers.
Because of how she comes across as such a lovely, warm person,
she could pretty much say anything she likes.
My favourite moment in a theatre ever was a Victoria Wood moment,
when she talked about her dyslexic boyfriend
who was very enthusiastic about her vinegar.
And the fact that a third of the audience
got it at first and laughed.
And then about, literally, ten seconds later,
another third got it and laughed.
And the final third didn't like it.
So they got it, but they went, "Ugh!" Like that.
It was the most complicated laughter I've ever heard,
I think, in a theatre.
There's not many I'd say this about,
I'll follow most of them.
I'll get on and have a go, bang, and I know I can get in there.
I wouldn't particularly want to follow her.
She is one of the...
You know. Most of the others, yeah. No problem.
But VW, woo!
I'll go on before you, dear, and warm them up.
You know I've been thinking about giving it up.
You know, being a stand-up comedian.
I was thinking about stopping doing it.
AUDIENCE: No!
Not tonight. I'll wait till you've gone home.
I enjoy it loads, now. Much more than I did.
I was always so anxious about it.
But now I'm not.
I'd never written a sitcom,
so that was one thing that I felt I ought to have a crack at,
to see if I could, you know, work out how the form worked.
Five's got a documentary.
Frederick Delius, Syphilis-Ridden Genius.
Oh, I might watch that. Oh, no, I can't. I'm working here, duh!
- What's that? - Half past four, a documentary.
Is it true about the syphilis Delius myth?
Delia Smith's never got syphilis!
How dare they? Don't tell me a woman with spotless tea towels
would stoop to that kind of infection.
I wanted to do a workplace comedy,
cos I didn't want to do a domestic comedy.
Cos I didn't like domestics.
I don't like mother, father, grumpy teenage daughter.
I don't like all those sitcoms.
It was going to be a workplace comedy.
It was going to be a group of people
that you only saw in their work setting.
So everything to find out about them, you could only find out
from what they said to each other in casual conversation.
I really think you should be sensitive
to a woman's hormonal ebb and flow.
I am, believe me. Look, I'm not a dinosaur.
I quite like women in a sad, baffled sort of way.
But can we please get a grip? Out of a workforce of five,
at any given moment, one will have premenstrual tension,
one's panicking cos she's not, someone's having a hot flush
and someone else is having a nervous breakdown
cos their HRT patch has fallen in the minestrone.
That was a one-off!
You could tell instantly it was obviously a Victoria Wood script
and she crams so much into her scripts.
Every episode, you could watch two or three times
before you've realised everything's in it.
You know, I had a story that went from week to week.
And I had a lot of characters coming back and forth,
and made it as complex as I could make it,
cos I did want people to be able to watch it more than once
and still get something from it.
It looked like they were closing off the flyover. Could be dodgy.
- Will that matter, no flyover? - Well, that's our main route in.
Oh, no!
One day, something went terribly wrong on the tubes or something.
Every which way I tried to get in to the Oval,
where we were rehearsing, I couldn't get there.
And I really lost my temper.
Stan, please, tell me what is happening with the traffic?
Well, Phil Henderson used to be a traffic warden,
but a mixture of nonstop verbal abuse and bunions made him rethink.
- Now then... - That's enough!
God Almighty!
I rang her up, saying, "Vic, I can't get there."
You know, this tirade down the telephone.
Does every simple query
have to come with a side order of spleens and bunions?
I need to know what's happening with the traffic.
Next week, I suddenly had this tirade to do for the millennium
and I thought, "She's very clever."
I don't need to know the life history of every blasted idiot
that's ever worked in this stupid, godforsaken factory!
It's one of my favourite bits.
This is Maxine Peake, who's not done any acting at all, have you?
Not even this afternoon you didn't do any.
I knew that Cheers recorded their final dress rehearsal
and then they would give notes and they would make changes
before they did the final evening show.
And I said to Geoff Posner I would really like to do this,
because I think until you've done it once in front of an audience,
you don't really know where the laughs come
and where it sits and what you could improve.
And he said, which was a very clever idea,
he said, "Let's just do it twice."
With Dinnerladies, we'd do a show on Friday night,
then we'd have rewrites.
Rewrites galore on that.
It was terribly hard work.
She kept rewriting all the time.
She'd stay up sometimes till four o'clock in the morning
and she had two small children then.
I said, "Did you sleep all right?"
"No, no. I've been up all night rewriting."
"Cor, another load of learning!"
Saturday morning, we'd be hoiked in.
And they'd say, "Gather round for notes and rewrites."
Thelma and I would look at each other and go, "Oh, God!"
You just had to keep re-learning.
And things would be cut and changed.
Sometimes she would say in the morning,
"Oh, that scene isn't working properly.
"Someone bring me egg and chips and I'll write it again over lunch."
Ten minutes later, it would come back. "How's that?"
And it's there. And it's totally from left field.
You know, something totally different.
And it was always better than the one she'd written,
but you had to learn it all over again!
Oh, flip! This job is a nightmare.
Julie and I both thought it was a bit like being on an ice rink.
"Yeah, when you can't skate."
I used to take all these things for my nerves,
like, sort of, herbal things, nothing terrible.
Julie and I were behind the flats
taking every sort of herbal remedy we could
to try and keep ourselves together.
We were all sniffing it before we went on.
I saw a section of the audience could see us and I thought,
"I bet they think we're at the amyl nitrate or something."
God knows what they thought we were doing!
I know. I know. It was really full-on.
It was really high pressure and some people did find that...
I understand that that's nerve-racking,
but we just wanted to make it as good as we could make it.
I suppose it was quite pressurised,
but everyone tries to be nice and calm,
but the person with the most pressure was Victoria.
What are you doing for Christmas again?
I told you, I got these three Carry On films for £8.
You don't get the boxes,
there's a stripe down the side of the picture, but...
Want to come to Scotland with me, Christmas Eve?
Me mate's got a pub up there.
We can drive up there after we've finished here.
Do you want to do that?
Yeah. Yeah, I would. I would like that.
One of the main things was Victoria Wood and my kiss
that we had as Tony and Bren.
Apparently, that was the first time she'd done that sort of thing
in public on television.
I'm not asking you for some bet, Bren.
I wouldn't do that to you.
I always remember the rest of the cast
peeping round the set, you know,
going, "Ooh!"
So embarrassing!
I wasn't bothered about it really.
It wasn't a big deal.
It wasn't a big snog or anything.
What was funny was when we did it, all the audience went, "Wooo!"
and you can hear them.
AUDIENCE: Wooo!
There's only one thing I didn't like about Dinnerladies -
I was never asked to be in it.
I'd have given my right hand to have come on as a lorry driver,
a bin man, anything to be in that.
Dinnerladies really for me encapsulates
everything that Victoria's best at.
It's observational.
It's character interplay.
I tell you who's nice that I like.
- Who's nice that you like, Bren? - Woody. - Allen?
- Woodpecker? - Who's Alan Woodpecker?
Great script, great cast.
By Jove, you've cracked it.
I couldn't see any of the cast in Dinnerladies
playing any other part in that show.
Whoops.
I didn't realise I was popping in to hunk heaven.
It's much better if you can write for specific comic people,
because they take something and they run with it
and you know what they're going to do with it.
Has she told you what a terrible mother I am?
I am terrible. Put her in an orphanage and lost the address.
Yes.
Oh, we laugh about it now.
It was a great atmosphere.
And because we knew each other, I understood, suddenly I understood,
why people do work with each other again and again.
I mean, I once was in a sketch that Vic had written
and felt strangely uncomfortable about it,
because I had a kind of confusion in my head
of learning the lines and having Vic there directing it.
And I thought, "This is all wrong.
"This should be Susie Blake or Celia Imrie
"or one of those really clever women!"
- Is it Harold who's supposed to have a bit of a party piece? - Oh!
All he does is struggle to force the theme tune
from Cagney And Lacey out of his...
Bottom?
No. Out of his ocarina, I was trying to say.
Bottom?! How could somebody get a tune out of their bottom?
There speaks a woman who's never gone camping.
On the negative side,
when I see Duncan Preston in something else, I'm like...
I thought I was gonna be a proper actor.
You know, a classical...
I was. You know, I did Stratford and things like that
and I never thought for a minute I was any good at sketches,
and I'm probably right.
- Good morning, sir. - Is Mr Dickens at home?
I think he's writing Dombey And Son, sir, but I'll go and see.
Are you famous?
My name is Wilde.
Oscar Wilde?
Well, I'm not bleedin' Marty Wilde, am I?
She's responsible for about 86% of my income over the last 28 years.
- Good morning. - Hi there.
I'm Sally Cumbernauld. This is Martin Crosswaite.
- How are you? - Oh, chipping in already!
LAUGHTER
I think because of how brilliant she is,
she's always going to be the Koh-i-Noor
in the centre of the other jewels.
But they all just make her shine all the brighter.
Better get used to our ugly mugs, cos you're going to see a lot of us.
Oh, speak for yourself.
No, I love him.
There's a shorthand when you work with people
and you know their working methods and you can just crack on.
But then it's always really interesting and exciting
to find new people and work with them and work in a different way.
Otherwise, you get stuck in quite a cosy rut,
where you've always got your old pals around you.
I think that's not good creatively,
which is why, the last few things I've done,
I've ducked and dived with the people I've worked with.
She's very clever. She gets good people around her.
BOND-STYLE MUSIC
Except me.
That was one of her mistakes.
Do you like Roger the Dodger?
Or do you prefer Minnie the Minx?
As actors, you may never have met before
and you're suddenly thrust into a dressing room
or into make-up chairs and you sit next to one another
and you sort of make polite conversation.
Sometimes I wish I were 15 years younger.
And sometimes I wish I were ten years older.
Then I could go to the flicks for two quid.
She was very easy, very easy.
I don't mean she was easy in the dressing room. No.
I mean she was easy to talk to.
Why don't you come and we'll while away a few of those 15 years?
She looked fabulous!
You thought, "Crumbs! How do you turn into Bren in Dinnerladies?"
- Can I just warn you, Roge, I've got really complicated pants on. - I see.
That's one thing I would not have predicted in my career
that I would end up in a pod on the London Eye with Roger Moore.
And he was so lovely.
And he knew his words,
which I didn't expect, cos often people...
Film stars, they don't often bother to learn all...
He knew the words completely bang-on.
And he was staring down out of the window,
and there was a pod below us of children
and he said, "If I wasn't in UNICEF, I would flash those children!"
It was only a joke.
Made me laugh anyway.
She's the most generous and unselfish
of performers and comediennes.
She's given nothing but wonderful things to other people to do.
- You OK, Laura? - I'm fine.
I guess I still haven't got used to the smell of men's trousers.
If you can't sort jumble, get out of the Women's Institute.
You can watch people that write a comedy,
they've got all the best lines,
all the lines that make people scream with laughter.
But she doesn't do that.
If the line's going to suit the character that she's made,
they do the line.
And I admire her trem... She's unique in that respect.
1.55!
It's ten off two now.
We'll never get the jumble sorted!
We're not going to make it!
This is the WI. If you wanna panic, join the Townswomen's Guild.
Not many people do that. Not many...
Not many men who had their own TV show would do that.
No men actually, probably.
And I think that's, you know...
That's a very, very unusual thing
to be that magnanimous and that confident.
I always try to be quite realistic and pragmatic.
If there's something I think somebody else will do better,
I'd always give it to them.
Well?
Sorry?
Thanks to your umbilical incompetence,
I, "sexy yet vulnerable" and I'm quoting from Harpers here,
I have been exposed on nationwide television
as having some dubious connection with an overweight northern waitress
with all the sophisticated allure of an airline salad.
That is such a little work of genius, isn't it?
And she gave it to me.
I'm sorry, if I'd written it, nobody else would be doing it.
I would be doing it.
I mean, who needs eight Vietnamese babies
when you can have a lumpy, old, short-order waitress for one week only?
Oh, no!
Milk it for all it's worth this week,
then I'll go home and she can take a flying...
Yes, quite.
At a deep-fat fryer!
Oh, she's horrendous.
The perm, the funny voice...
It's real Tracey Ullman time.
Yes? I'm talking!
I think it's hard when you're known for being a comedian
or your world has been comedy,
to try and make the leap from that to serious acting.
And I think Victoria's done that absolutely brilliantly.
I keep waking up and crying,
but that's manageable. But...
Yesterday I went to the...
To where we used to live and the key wouldn't fit
and I was just standing in the street.
And I thought, "Why won't the key fit?"
And that did bother me, cos I thought,
"What if I'm ill again?"
Should you not go back to Dr Brierley?
He was pretty good last time, wasn't he?
I daren't get the doctor, Cliff. You know how Daddy can get
when he thinks he's going to be expensive and...
Anyway, I'm fine.
And the BAFTA goes to...
Victoria Wood for Housewife, 49.
APPLAUSE
APPLAUSE DROWNS SPEECH
I won a BAFTA for wearing a wig, I think, probably.
It's really upsetting actually that she can do all of these things
and write hit West-End musicals and appear in serious dramas.
And, you know, she's loathsome.
It's just really got on my nerves.
And I'm still quoting her every day of my life probably.
PIANO INTRO
I would be deliriously happy
just to be able to play the piano
as well as she does.
Nobody talks about that.
This is just accepted, the fact, "Oh, Vic plays the piano and sings."
# Comedians are tough and hard
# We've all been hurt We've all been scarred
# We all do ads for Barclaycard I'm feeling in the mood tonight
# Before the show we gather round In every theatre, every town
# Sooty, put that toothpaste down I'm feeling in the mood tonight... #
I learnt to play piano when I was about seven.
My father wrote the names of the notes
on the keys of the piano in pencil
and then he wrote the names of the notes on a piece of music,
Polly Wolly Doodle, and then he left the room.
And that was it. That was him teaching me to play the piano.
But that was enough for me to work it out for myself.
And then I was obsessed with playing the piano.
I played it all the time.
Then I was given piano lessons when I was about eight
and I was so nervous - I couldn't deal with being
in the same room with this man and I used to sweat.
My hands would slide off the keys. So I stopped going.
So then I would only play in secret.
I thought, "Well, I'm not having piano lessons,
"I shouldn't be playing the piano. That would be naughty."
So I only played the piano when my parents went out of the house.
Then when the headlights would sweep up the drive,
I would get off the piano and run away.
So they didn't know that I played for years.
I was told, age 20, that a song is two minutes, ten seconds,
and for years, no matter what I thought I was writing,
it always came out at two minutes, ten seconds.
I realised, not very long ago, that they actually could be longer.
# We're listening for the sleigh bells
# We're looking for the sleigh
# We hope this special person comes in time for Christmas Day... #
# Let's join in the magic of Christmas make-believe
# Who do we all want to see on Christmas Eve?
# Ann Widdecombe
# That's who we want to see We agree... #
Her songs have a lot of depth.
You know, they are very funny,
but they're also very, very clever, musically,
and there's other stuff to them.
# Ann Widdecombe
# I like the suits I wear
# Unsquashable
# But washable
# I can't relax!
# Can't relax!
# When in slacks
# Or panda pants! #
And it's only really in the last few years,
as I've worked with other musical people,
that I've got some more sense of what I do is worth doing.
That these songs are worth writing and that they OK, the songs are OK.
PIANO INTRO
The Ballad of Barry and Freda.
That's just genius.
It's absolutely sublime. It's spot-on.
# Freda and Barry sat one night
# The sky was clear The stars were bright
# The wind was soft
# The moon was up
# Freda drained her cocoa cup
# She licked her lips
# She felt sublime
# She switched off Gardeners' Question Time
# Barry cringed in fear and dread
# As Freda grabbed his tie and said,
# "Let's do it, let's do it
# "Do it while the mood is right
# "I'm feelin' appealin'
# "I've really got an appetite
# "I'm on fire with desire
# "I could handle half the tenors in a male voice choir
# "Let's do it. Let's do it tonight!" #
She could have said, "I could handle all the tenors," but she didn't.
She just said half of them, which is brilliant.
# "Go native
# "Creative living in the living room
# "This folly is jolly
# "Bend me over backwards on me hostess trolley
# Let's do it Let's do it tonight! #
"Bend me over backwards on the hostess trolley."
Oh, I had visions of that and just roared laughing.
There is a theme of trolleys in her work.
# "I'm older, feel colder
# "It's other things that turn me on
# "I'm imploring. I'm boring.
# "Let me read this catalogue of vinyl flooring
# "I can't do it I can't do it tonight!" #
Most of us have been there at one point or another.
"Oh, no. Not now. Not tonight, Josephine."
# "Don't angle for me to dangle
# "Me arms have never been that strong
# "Stop pouting Stop shouting
# "You know I pulled a muscle when I did that grouting
# "I can't do it I can't do it tonight! #
It goes on...
And it's a long song.
And on...
Constantly - "Let's do it!" and then the key change.
# Dah dah dah dah! #
And you have all these different key changes.
# "Stop nagging I'm flagging
# You know as well as I do That the pipes need lagging
# "I can't do it I can't do it tonight!" #
It's probably 20 years since I wrote it.
My voice has got much lower.
I can only play it in the keys I used to play it in.
I can't sing it. I look really silly!
# "You want to grab your man with lust
"No cautions, just contortions
# "Smear an avocado on me lower portions... #
It's a hard song to perform, but bloody hell, it's good.
It's a work of genius.
# "Let's do it, let's do it I really want to rant and rave
# "Let's go, cos I know Just how I want you to behave
# Not meekly, not bleakly
# Beat me on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly
# Let's do it Let's do it tonight! #
APPLAUSE
Just even talking about it,
I've been feeling low down, depressed or whatever,
bung one of her sketches up or even think about it
and it chuckles you up for the day.
May she keep on making me laugh. It's wonderful. Thank you, Victoria.
It's a cliche to say that Victoria's the sort of person
you'd like to spend an evening in the pub with, but you would.
And will you continue to handle my potatoes?
Of course.
I have learnt, with Vic, to stop wasting my time
wishing I could emulate her and to just enjoy admiring her.
Massive talent, basically, is the secret of her longevity.
I feel very lucky to be able to think of her as a darling friend.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Ooh!
Sorry.
Just the very fact that Victoria Wood knows I exist
is enough to make me die happy.
She will loom large in the history of television and stage comedy
and writing generally.
I look back, I feel really fortunate that I managed to get from
dying the death in a folk club to playing the Albert Hall.
And I'm proud that I can still go on television now,
you know, that I've managed to keep a career going
along all those years.
And I'm really happy about that.
I wouldn't change any of that.