Victoria Wood (19 May 1953 – 20 April 2016) was an English comedian, actress, musician, screenwriter, and director. Wood wrote and starred in dozens of sketches, plays, musicals, films and sitcoms over several decades, and her live comedy act was interspersed with her own compositions which she performed at the piano. Much of her humour was grounded in everyday life and included references to activities, attitudes and products that are considered to exemplify Britain. She was noted for her skills in observational comedy and in satirising aspects of social class.
Wood started her career in 1974 by appearing on, and winning, the ATV talent show New Faces. She established herself as a comedy star in the 1980s, winning a BAFTA TV Award in 1986 for the sketch series Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV (1985–87), and became one of Britain's most popular stand-up comics, winning a second BAFTA for An Audience with Victoria Wood (1988). In the 1990s, she wrote and co-starred in the television film Pat and Margaret (1994), and the sitcom dinnerladies (1998–2000), which she also produced. She won two more BAFTA TV Awards, including Best Actress, for her 2006 ITV1 television film, Housewife, 49. Her frequent long-term collaborators included Julie Walters, Celia Imrie, Duncan Preston, and Anne Reid. In 2006, Wood came tenth in ITV's poll of the British public's 50 Greatest TV Stars.
Victoria Wood was the youngest child of Stanley and Ellen "Nellie" Wood (née Mape). Stanley worked as an insurance salesman, who also wrote songs for his company's Christmas parties, was the author of the musical play Clogs (based in a Lancashire village in 1887) and wrote part-time for Coronation Street and others. She had three siblings: a brother, Chris, and two sisters, Penny and Rosalind.
Wood was born in Prestwich and brought up in nearby Bury. She was educated at Fairfield County Primary School and Bury Grammar School for Girls, where she immediately found herself out of her depth.
I was always top of the class, and when I went to grammar school I could not deal with everyone being as clever... I went under. I was a mess, a bit of a misfit. I didn't have any friends, let alone try to be funny...I didn't do any work, didn't have clean clothes and didn't wash. If I didn't have any money I'd steal from people, and if I hadn't done my homework I'd steal someone else's. I was envious of all the groups: the horsey group, the girls who went out with boys, the clever ones. Looking back, I feel really sorry for that little girl.
Wood developed eating disorders, but in 1968, her father gave her a piano for her 15th birthday. She later said of this unhappy time "The good thing about being isolated is you get a good look at what goes on. I was reading, writing and working at the piano all the time. I was doing a lot of other things that helped me to perform." Later that year, she joined the Rochdale Youth Theatre Workshop, where she felt she was "in the right place and knew what I was doing" and she made an impression with her comic skill and skill in writing. She went on to study in the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham.
Wood began her show business career while an undergraduate, appearing on the ITV talent show New Faces in 1974. It led to an appearance in a sketch show featuring the series' winners The Summer Show. A further break came as a novelty act on the BBC's consumer affairs programme That's Life! in 1976. She had met long-term collaborator Julie Walters in 1971, when Wood applied to the Manchester School of Theatre, then part of Manchester Polytechnic. Coincidentally, the pair met again when they appeared in the same theatre revue In at the Death in 1978 (for which Wood wrote a brief sketch). Its success led to the commissioning of Wood's first play Talent (in 1978), starring Hazel Clyne (in a role originally written for Walters), for which Wood won an award for the Most Promising New Writer. Peter Eckersley, the head of drama at Granada Television, saw Talent and invited Wood to create a television adaptation. This time, Julie Walters took the lead role, while Wood reprised her stage role. In 2019, John Lloyd revealed that Wood was offered the female role in Not the Nine O'Clock News, but turned it down.
The success of the television version of Talent led to Wood writing the follow-up Nearly a Happy Ending. Shortly afterwards she wrote a third play for Granada, Happy Since I Met You, again with Walters alongside Duncan Preston as the male lead. In 1980 she wrote and starred in the stage play Good Fun.
Recognising her talent, Eckersley offered Wood a sketch show, although Wood was unsure of the project: she agreed to go ahead only if Walters received equal billing. Eckersley came up with an obvious title – Wood and Walters, and the pilot episode was recorded. It led to a full series, featuring Duncan Preston and a supporting cast. In the period between the completion of the pilot and the shooting of the series, Eckersley died. Wood credited him with giving her her first big break, and felt that Wood and Walters suffered due to his death. She was not impressed by Brian Armstrong, his fill-in, and was of the opinion that he hired unsuitable supporting actors.
Peter Llewellyn-Jones as an actor/presenter in Yorkshire Television's 1984 schools television programme for hearing-impaired children, Insight - a remake of the series originally presented by Derek Griffiths. In 1982 and 1983 she appeared as a panellist on BBC Radio 4's Just a Minute.
In October 1983 Wood performed her first solo stand-up show, Lucky Bag, in a five-week run at the King's Head Theatre in Islington. The show transferred to the Ambassadors Theatre for a 12-night run in February 1984. Lucky Bag went on a short UK tour in November and December 1984 and was also released as a live album recorded at the Edinburgh Festival in 1983.
Wood left Granada in 1984 for the BBC, which promised her more creative control over projects. Later that year her sketch show Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV went into production. Wood chose the actors: her friend Julie Walters once again starred, as did Duncan Preston. Wood's friends Celia Imrie, Susie Blake and Patricia Routledge were in the cast. As Seen on TV featured the Acorn Antiques series of sketches, parodying the low-budget soap opera Crossroads, and rumoured to be named after an antiques shop in her birthplace. Acorn Antiques is remembered for characters such as "Mrs Overall" (played by Walters), the deliberately bad camera angles and wobbling sets, and Celia Imrie's sarcastic tone as "Miss Babs". One of Wood's most popular comic songs, "The Ballad of Barry and Freda (Let's Do It)", originated on this show. It tells the story of Freda (a woman eager for sex) and Barry (an introverted man terrified of intimate relations), and makes clever use of allusions to a multitude of risqué activities while avoiding all taboo words.
Following the success of the first series of Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV, Wood went on tour again with Lucky Bag in March 1985. Scene, a documentary for BBC2 later that year, showed footage of Wood preparing for the tour and clips of her performing the show at Derby Assembly Rooms.
A second series of Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV was made in 1986. Before filming began in the summer, Wood went on a 22-date tour of England and Scotland during March and April. A final 'Special' 40-minute episode of As Seen on TV was made in 1987 and broadcast later that year.
During autumn 1987 Wood went on the road with what was to be her largest tour yet. The tour included a sell-out two-week run at the London Palladium, and had a second leg in the spring of 1988.
In 1988 she appeared in the BAFTA-winning An Audience with Victoria Wood for ITV. At the time of recording the show she was six months pregnant. The end of 1988 saw the release of her second live album Victoria Wood Live, recorded at the Brighton Dome.
Wood recorded two songs for the 1985 movie Return to Oz. Neither were used in the final release.