Victoria Wood has been gone for ten years and I miss her every dsy | UK | News

I was lucky enough to count Victoria Wood as a friend. During numerous meetings over more than two decades, we established a
terrific rapport. Victoria was a delightful, life-enhancing presence. I always came away from seeing her with an inner glow of joy – and an irrepressible, silly grin on my face.

The tone was set at our very first encounter in 1994. From the moment we sat down to chat on the West London set of her marvellous film about ill-matched sisters, Pat and Margaret, I instantly fell for Victoria’s mega-watt charisma.

She was in tremendous form that day, mocking her character Margaret’s tight curly perm.

“No naked flames near it, please. All the budget went on it.”

The comedian went on to recall a previous day filming at Heston Services, where Margaret worked cooking fry-ups.

“We were ambushed by 45 women on their way to Ladies’ Day at Ascot. They were all pointing at us as though we were rare llamas in a zoo.

“On another occasion, bystanders started videoing us. ‘Ooo, it’s that woman off telly.’ ‘Who do you mean?’ ‘You know.’ ‘We’ll ask Doreen.’ ‘No, she’s in toilet’.”

As I sat there, laughing uncontrollably at her spontaneous brilliance, a long-lasting friendship was born.

So it is with particular sorrow that I remember the death of my friend 10 years ago this year. It was a moment of intense national bereavement.

Victoria’s long-time friend and collaborator Dame Julie Walters encapsulated the national mood when she released a statement saying: “I’m too heart-sore to comment. The loss of her is incalculable.”

I was very fortunate to go to Victoria’s memorial service at St James’s Piccadilly in London on July 4, 2016 – the only journalist to do so. Attended by more than 400 people, including friends of Victoria’s such as Celia Imrie, Steve Coogan, Emilia Fox, David Threlfall, Vic Reeves, Dame Maureen Lipman, Maxine Peake and Joan Armatrading, it was a deeply moving occasion.

The incomparable Julie performed some of Victoria’s memorable sketches and Michael Ball sang some of her timeless songs.

As an 11-piece band from the Royal Academy of Music Brass closed the service with a medley of Victoria’s favourite tunes, there was not a dry eye in the church.

It was a day of profound sadness, celebrating someone who brought us profound happiness.

And I am not alone in still feeling an overwhelming sense of loss at Victoria’s passing.

On the 10th anniversary of her death from cancer at the age of just 62, millions up and down the country will be mourning the departure of one of our greatest ever comedians.

To mark the milestone, her wonderful life story is being recounted in a feature-length documentary, Becoming Victoria Wood, released in cinemas on Friday and on U&Gold in February.

She will also be commemorated with the opening of the new Victoria Wood Theatre at Bowness-On-Windermere in the Lake District this month.

In May the venue will host the world premiere of Fourteen Again, a musical based on her songs.

So why is Victoria still so widely missed? And what drew – and continues to draw – untold legions of fans (known as “The Woodettes”) to this comic genius?

For a start, no other performer stood out in so many different fields. Victoria excelled in everything from stand-up (she sold out the Royal Albert Hall for a record-breaking 15 nights – twice!), sketch shows (Victoria Wood: As Seen On TV), and sitcoms (Dinnerladies) to comedy songs (The Ballad of Barry & Freda (Let’s Do It)), humorous films (Pat And Margaret), dramatic films (Housewife, 49) and musicals (Acorn Antiques: The Musical!)

She won four Bafta awards along the way. Truly, she was one of a kind. As Julie puts it: “She was the only one of her that there was. You could not compare Vic to anybody else.”

Catherine Abbott, the director of Becoming Victoria Wood, agrees. “She was unique. Early on in her career, it was difficult for her because nobody knew what to do with her.

“They wanted to put her in a box, but there wasn’t one shape that fitted her. So she had to make her own box.”

Victoria was also universally loved because she struck a chord with audiences. She portrayed the sort of ordinary people not often depicted on TV. Audiences connected with Victoria because even when she was rich and famous, she remained “one of us”.

As she saw it: “My only perception is that we’re all in it together and some of us are actually going on telly and talking about it.”

The key to her comedy was relatability.

Victoria, who blossomed once she discovered comedy after a reclusive and lonely childhood in Bury, was able to identify with her audience in a way few performers can. Always capable of finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, she never patronised her fans.

They were thrilled to see themselves mirrored in the woman up on stage. In short, she “got” us.

“Even though she had become very famous, she continued to be the ordinary person that she was right at the beginning,” says Geoff Posner, the producer and director of Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV and Dinnerladies.

Catherine nods her head. “The audience would feel that they’d seen themselves, or that they’d seen somebody who got them and had expressed something about their lives that nobody else had.

“That is partly because Victoria kept exploring day-to-day life and the kind of people and stories that aren’t always celebrated front and centre.

“She was able to see the magic in all of that.

“In her hands, everybody was interesting and everybody could be funny.”

Another notable quality in Victoria’s comedy was her eagerness to champion the underdog.

The mother-of-two once said, “I’m aware of people who don’t have chances in life, who are stuck in a situation.

“I understand what it’s like to feel that you aren’t important and that people don’t find you interesting, because that’s how I felt as a teenager. Those are things I always want to put into my work.”

Victoria’s use of language and precise employment of brand names were always spot on.

Remember that immortal line from The Ballad of Barry & Freda – “Beat me on the bottom with a Woman’s Weekly.”

On one occasion, Victoria explained to me how she came up with such unfailingly accurate dialogue. “I pay little people to come round to my house and tell me about their lives,” she joked. “I talk like that myself, and I keep my ears open.

“I want my characters to sound realistic and not talk in ‘jokey dialogue’.

“I’m a lower middle-class person. I haven’t altered my attitude – I’ve just added a few cars and houses. Alan Bennett has lived in Regents Park for 30 years, and he can still do it.” Audiences were also attracted to that fundamentally British characteristic: self-deprecation. “It’s a British thing, I was born with it,” Victoria once told me.

“I couldn’t go on stage and tell them how marvellous I am. It’s much more like, ‘I had come here to entertain you, but I can see you’re busy, so I won’t detain you for any longer than is necessary’.”

In the male-dominated realm of comedy in the early 1980s, Victoria was ground-breaking in the way she viewed the world through a female lens. She broke down barriers previously thought insurmountable.

In one of myriad quotable one-liners, Victoria once asked: “You know that building in London where all the windows blew out? That wasn’t a bomb, it was 56 premenstrual women the day the chocolate machine broke down!”

Geoff recollects that when Victoria Wood: As Seen On TV began in 1985, people said, “‘We can’t have a half-hour programme hosted by and written by a woman, especially one from the North, especially not one who talks about personal things’.”

Victoria even made a joke of Southerners’ disdain for the North.

In one sketch, the posh continuity announcer played by Susie Blake in Victoria Wood: As Seen On TV, says: “We’d like to apologise to viewers in the North. It must be awful for them.”

But Victoria was never going to be held back by what men thought. “All kinds of things she talked about had never been mentioned on TV from a woman’s point of view before,” says Geoff.

“Victoria lifted up the stone and examined what’s underneath. In part of her stand-up show, she talked about how you develop piles when you have a baby. It’s something that everybody knows happens, but nobody talked about.”

Victoria was a pioneer for other female comedians. “She gave us permission,” says Dawn French, another outstanding comic. “She was a trailblazer.”

Maxine, Victoria’s co-star in Dinnerladies, believes it was very significant that, for example, The Ballad of Barry & Freda was told from the perspective of a woman with a sex drive.

“It was so important because so many women were shamed into not talking about these things,” she says. “Sometimes you’d laugh till you cried because it was about the female experience.

“People did feel seen by her. I’d say it was therapy wrapped up in laughter.”

In assessing her life, Victoria once reflected: “All I ever wanted to do was be funny. That was my ambition. I can’t really imagine a better job – that you would write something and it would make people laugh.” She achieved that – and gave the world untold comedy gold in the process.

All of which made Victoria’s death a decade ago so much more heartbreaking.

Michael, who starred in her splendid 2014 musical film, That Day We Sang, recalls: “When she passed, it was a genuine moment where everyone was devastated. That’s when you understood the impact that she had on so many people’s lives.”

Catherine adds: “I remember very much the outpouring of grief and the collective national shock when she passed. It felt like a huge loss at the time, and I don’t think that’s particularly diminished in the years since.

“She remains so loved. There’s a void there. There are lots of brilliant comedians around, but because Victoria was so unique and so much herself, there’s not really anyone else who’s doing it in quite the same way.”

Maxine concurs. “She is still lauded as the best comedian – not comedienne – we’ve ever had.”

But it is Victoria who summed up her enduring popularity best. “People used to really struggle to try and describe me. But now they describe other people by saying, ‘It’s like Victoria Wood’.”

A pause. “So I think I’ve got away with it.”

● Becoming Victoria Wood is released in cinemas on Friday and on U&Gold in February