Victoria Wood (19 May 1953 – 20 April 2016) was an English comedian, actress, singer, songwriter, pianist, screenwriter, playwright and director. She was born into a middle-class family in Prestwich, Lancashire and much of her humour was influenced by her background Oop North.
She first appeared on British TV in the 1970s but her career really got going in the 1980s with her sketch show, Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV, which helped to launch the career of Julie Walters. Wood combined being an old-school variety entertainer with being a modern writer/performer in that she had an affable stage presence as a comedian and wrote and sang very funny and sometimes biting songs, but was also a gifted dramatist who was unafraid to find humour in dark topics such as loneliness, isolation and illness. She later created a successful sitcom, dinnerladies, and wrote many single dramas for TV, not all of them comic.
She won many awards for her work, regularly topped polls of favourite comedians, and in 1997 she was given an OBE (followed in 2008 by the next medal up, the CBE. See Knight Fever for an explanation.) She also worked as an actor, appearing in (among other things) The Borrowers (2011).
She was widely regarded in Britain as a national treasure, and when she died unexpectedly in 2016note , UK Prime Minister David Cameron actually described her as one (one of the few things he's said which most British people would agree with him about). The Guardian newspaper said in an editorial comment that she 'combined Alan Bennett's ear for dialogue, Noël Coward’s songwriting skills, Ronnie Barker’s comic acting talent and Ken Dodd's command of gag-cracking. She had the loveability of a Gracie Fields or an Eric Morecambe and at her best she could channel some of the same humanist poignancy as a Chaplin or a Chekhov."
Her TV shows with their own work pages are:
- Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV (1985—1987)
- dinnerladies (1998—2000)
Tropes invoked by her work:
- Author Avatar: Despite Wood’s penchant for self-deprecation, we get a peak at her inner confidence via an amusing analogue of her own life story in her “Bessie Bunter: The Musical” sketch for Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV, in which she plays the eponymous overweight, downtrodden schoolgirl, who (one hot night) decides to turn her fortunes around, finds her voice, and blasts out a glorious I Am What I Am finale number.One day I was Bessie Bunter, who was she?
She was just a punter, she was nobody.
Then suddenly, one hot night, had a brainwave like a spotlight…
Goodbye, Bessie…
Say helloooo, to ME! - Bawdy Song: Her most famous song "The Ballad of Barry and Freda (Let's Do It)
" is a hilariously Overly Long Gag about a lustful woman trying to persuade her unenthusiastic man to have hot sex, alternating 'she said' with 'he said' verses:So she said:
Let's do it! Let's do it, Have a crazy night of love!
I'll strip bare. I'll just wear, stilettos and an oven glove.
Don't starve a girl of a palaver. Dangle from the wardrobe in your Balaclava.
Let's do it! Let's do it tonight!
But he said:
I can't do it. I can't do it. I know I'd only get it wrong.
Don't angle for me to dangle. Me arms 'ave 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. - Production Posse: She preferred to work with the same actors as often as possible. Julie Walters, Celia Imrie and Duncan Preston were regular collaborators.
- Self-Deprecation: The source of much of her humour. Whenever she wrote a part for a large woman, she'd play it herself, even if it meant taking a relatively minor role.
- Sour Prudes: She played this trope for laughs quite a lot: Barry in "Let's Do it" is a low-key example. Her song "Pam" is from the POV of a much darker example:I don't say who, I do say whom,
I never use the toilet, just the smallest room.
I don't say gay, I still say queer,
I think that Mussolini had the right idea.
