Victoria Wood

by Neil Brandwood

  Despite Victoria’s optimism, she got a rude awakening at Bury Grammar. ‘It was the first time I’d been with people as clever as me, and I didn’t like it,’ she said.

  Gail Branch recalled: ‘I think the nature of the place made everyone competitive. You either competed or you sank. You had to play the game.’ Hilary Wills added: ‘It was very, very qualification-orientated. We were not exactly encouraged to all work together as a group.’

  Instead of trying to compete, Victoria withdrew. If she could not be the best why subject herself to futile efforts to keep up with the academic high flyers? It is interesting to note that years later, when Victoria began carving a niche as a stand-up comedian, it was a field free of female rivals.

  Although intelligent, Victoria’s self-acknowledged laziness at school meant she quickly sank to the bottom in some subjects. Gail Branch recalled: ‘She was very bright, though not academic in the sense of slogging. She didn’t need to work at the things she was good at because she was naturally good at them. And what she wasn’t good at, she wasn’t particularly interested in.’

  Victoria may have derived some amusement from a couple of the teachers. The distinctly Grenfell-like Miss Orme taught Classics and wrote the school song (‘I’ve always been a bit of a versifier, either in Latin or English’). An omnipresent photographer, she enjoyed ‘marshalling people into groups and making them pose’. Mrs Starkey, the History teacher, had a habit of punctuating her speech with ‘erm’ (a trait Victoria later gave some of her comic creations). The girls whiled away her lessons by counting the number of times she would make the utterance.

  Presiding over the school with the same authority she displayed when sitting on the bench at Bury Magistrates Court was the headmistress, Miss Lester. ‘She was very much the iron fist in the velvet glove. She never raised her voice but her name was enough to strike the fear of God into one,’ said Hilary Wills.

  Victoria was unfortunate with her first form teacher, and found Miss Smith, the Games teacher, ‘very frightening’. Her form mates agreed and remembered her as stern, harsh and strict. Being unsuited to sport did not endear Victoria to Miss Smith. By comparison Penny Wood, who attended the school from 1956 to 1963 before going on to study Fine Art at Leeds University, was a star of the hockey team, and Chris Foote-Wood excelled on the cross-country track.

  ‘I quite liked Gym because I was fairly bendy,’ said Victoria. ‘I wasn’t very good at it, though – I could never get up a rope to save my life!’ Organised games were not her forte either. ‘I once got on the hockey team by mistake, because they needed somebody wide to go in the goal. Anyway, I let in thirteen goals, and nobody spoke to me on the bus back.’

  In later years, Victoria became less disparaging about her athletic abilities, but this was after she had attended confidence-boosting therapy sessions. ‘Because I was fat I didn’t think I was good at anything. But I suppose I could have done lots of things if I’d tried, but I just thought that I couldn’t.’

  Her least favourite subjects were Geography, Biology and Physics (‘I just used to waffle my way through them’). She liked Art and thought Domestic Science was ‘a good laugh’, although she admitted she was no good at it. A disastrous attempt at making a gingham apron (‘It was like an old dishcloth by the time I finished’) showed she had not inherited her mother’s needlework skills.

  As with all other aspects of school life, uniform regulations were strictly enforced. Skirts had to be knee-length and the hated stiff, grey felt hats had to be worn at all times, even on bus journeys to and from school – prefects would report anyone they spotted hatless. The hallmark of teenage rebellion was to wear a school tie. Gail Branch recalled: ‘When we first went, there was a school tie and then they changed the blouses to open neck. So what did we all do? We started wearing ties just to be awkward, to rebel.’

  Other attempts at insubordination included defying the school’s blue underwear policy by wearing psychedelic knickers. ‘There was a fad for dyeing underwear,’ said Victoria. ‘It was when all psychedelic colours had come in so everything had to be lime green or purple or orange. We were supposed to wear navy blue knickers every day, but people only used to bother on gym days, which was Friday.’

  For Victoria, who was never fashion-conscious, school uniform was an irrelevance. ‘I never minded it as much as most people, because I only liked wearing trousers, and I knew that they would never be allowed. So I didn’t really care – one skirt was much the same as another to me.’

  The school song includes the line: ‘Here may we know the comradeship of youth’, but the ethos of Bury Grammar meant more importance was attached to developing academic excellence than social skills. ‘It took a long time to establish friendships and get to know people,’ remembered Gail Branch. ‘I think a lot of us weren’t so much shy as introverted because of the situation.’

  Victoria was a loner to begin with, but she wanted friendship. ‘I had some friends, but until later I was never in the groups I wanted to be in. I used to look at the girls who rode horses, or were good at games … and I’d think “Oh I wish I was one of you” … Now I think thank God I wasn’t! But I did get in with some amusing girls.’ One of these was the calm, intelligent and ambitious Lesley Fitton, whose friendship with Victoria endured into adulthood. Although she and Victoria were in different forms, they grew closer as they progressed through the school.

  Typically for the unfortunate Victoria, Lesley, who went on to work as a research assistant in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum, was one of the ‘Rochdale crowd’. This made home visits difficult so Victoria was still pretty much isolated outside school hours. Within her form, Victoria chummed up with the mischievous Patricia Ogden, who shared a love of music and window-shopping. Dorothy Kershaw’s boutique in Bury town centre was a favourite haunt. ‘We used to look in the shop window wishing we had money,’ remembered Victoria, who, with Patricia, would also mooch around the Co-op and Bury Market eating sweets.

  Individuality was frowned upon at the school and inevitably the girls would sometimes react to the starchy regime. Misdemeanours tended to be thin on the ground, however, such was the discipline. The fear of incurring Miss Lester’s wrath was an effective deterrent in itself and the cane was not needed. Detentions and lines were meted out for such offences as not walking on the left-hand side of the corridor, chewing in public and not wearing school hats. Victoria was a frequent offender and joked that she was kept behind so often her parents thought she was on the night shift. ‘I never went home, I was always in detention. I was always doing lines. I’d only been in the school for about three minutes when I was put in detention for not having a name tape on my pumps – my mum had used magic marker instead. And then I got in deep trouble for writing a message on a notice board in chalk.’

  It was not the only time she got into trouble.

  ‘I suppose I was a bit naughty,’ admitted Victoria with classic understatement. Her natural puckishness could not be suppressed: she pocketed the £13 sponsor money she made from a school walk across the moors, and she found an ingenious way of avoiding yet another detention for not doing her homework. Having secretly swiped half the essays from the teacher’s desk and thrown them away, she added her own indignant voice to those of the more conscientious pupils and insisted to the puzzled teacher that she, too, had dutifully handed in her homework assignment.

  Classrooms were turned back to front, there were stink bombs in the music room, knickers flying from the flagpole, organised desk lid banging and book dropping, but it took a truly elaborate prank to cause Miss Williams, the French teacher, to flee the classroom in tears.

  ‘There were collapsible desks and string was tied all the way around,’ recalled Hilary Wills. ‘We each held a piece, but those sitting at the four corners had more. In the middle of the lesson they pulled them and the desks all went … I remember Victoria tying the desks together. I think she owned up for that actually. And I’m sure she Sellot
aped the piano keys before a concert. Everyone just erupted when the teacher sat down to play.’

  But not all the pranks were without malice. ‘There was one girl, called Gail, and we always used to shut her in the cupboard, because everyone hated her,’ confessed Victoria. Quite why Victoria singled her out is a mystery. While admitting they were never best friends, Gail Branch remembered sharing jokes and a seat with Victoria on the top deck of the number 9 bus on the way into school each morning. ‘She used to joke about having spots and lank, greasy hair and I used to say about how I got called Twiggy because I was as skinny as a rake.’

  Perhaps it was the survival-of-the-fittest ethos that influenced Victoria and encouraged her to view Gail as an easy target. Disabled by a hip complaint, she was a year younger than everyone else, came from a working-class family, lived in a terraced house and was interested in religion. An apology of sorts eventually came in 1996 when, after reducing Melvyn Bragg to sniggering incredulity by revealing her torture skills on The South Bank Show, Victoria turned to the camera and said sorry to her victim by name.

  ‘I don’t know why she said that, I wasn’t the only one to get tied-up,’ was Gail’s indignant response.

  Victoria was not bullied herself and unlike many other entertainers she did not have to ‘perform’ in order to escape intimidation. She never claimed to be ‘the Class Joker’, but acknowledged that she used humour to give herself an identity and a pathway through school. Despite being on the receiving end of Victoria’s cruel streak, Gail was not unappreciative of her ‘tongue-in-cheek and down-to-earth’ sense of humour. Hilary Wills was a fan of her dry sarcasm.

  What Victoria’s sense of humour made of a visit to dreary Birtle by the epitome of 1960s Hollywood glamour is easy to imagine. The incongruity must have certainly appealed to her sense of the ridiculous.

  Down the road from Birtle Edge House is the Church Inn where, rather bizarrely, the American actress Jayne Mansfield celebrated her 35th and final birthday in April 1967. The then landlord had met the pneumatic star at a horse race and invited her to pull a pint at his recently refurbished pub. She took him up on the offer to become a temporary barmaid and spent 45 minutes at the ‘simply wonderful’ pub en route to an engagement in Westhoughton.

  The idea of such a glamorous Hollywood star visiting her distinctly unglamorous home patch must have tickled the young Victoria and it was around this time that she wrote a song about a flat-chested girl who took pills to grow breasts. Such pills would not be needed by Victoria once she entered puberty. Indeed, she soon realised her developing breasts could become a valuable asset. That is, until Twiggy struck.

  The flat-chested look was suddenly in vogue thanks to the waif-like model and Victoria’s breasts became as frowned upon as her greasy hair. In later life she said her bosom was the thing she most disliked about her appearance, but back then there were more serious underlying problems. It was only natural that her unhappiness and sense of inadequacy should manifest itself externally and with Victoria that meant her eating habits. ‘You choose food to deal with other problems, the way other people choose cigarettes or drink or drugs,’ she said.

  Victoria felt that being fat was some sort of criminal offence. Her guilt complex was not helped by her mother Helen, who marched the self-conscious 12-year-old to the doctor and had her put on diet pills. Helen, who was not interested in whether Victoria’s clothes were ironed, whether her daughter had washed or whether she had a packed lunch for school, did find the time to encourage countless diets. They included slimmers’ biscuits and drinks, hot water and lemon juice, and a belief that by eating grapefruit before a rasher of bacon, the grapefruit would ‘eat’ the bacon. Each time a fad failed Victoria consoled herself by eating more sweets. ‘I hated being fat but I didn’t do anything about it,’ she said. ‘I just felt wrong.’

  In slimmed-down adulthood she was able to joke about the plump, spotty, spectacle-wearing mess she had been: ‘I was the one with the insulating tape round the glasses and a face like Dick Whittington’s hankie.’ But as a schoolgirl she was painfully aware that she did not meet the ideal. ‘When you’re a teenager being fat is “not on”. The only saving grace was that there was a girl who was fatter than me in my class and she took all the stick.’

  Victoria did suffer at home, though, where her unhealthy habit of comparing herself to others continued to eat away at her self-confidence. When she held herself up to Penny and Rosalind, she was bound to feel gauche and unattractive.

  I felt that my sisters were much cleverer and much better at everything than me. It never occurred to me that it was just because they were older; I thought they were naturally endowed with more brains and more looks … just better at everything. So I tended to disassociate myself from the things they did. I stayed at home, and often sneaked round their rooms – privately taking an interest in their doings.

  Penny was not interested in boys, but she was well liked according to her school friend, Sheila James. ‘She was good fun to be around. She was popular because she was good at Games and she was the complete opposite of Victoria: tall, dark and thin.’ But it was Rosalind whom Victoria hero-worshipped.

  She’s a brilliant dancer, she used to go to all the clubs in Manchester and dance and meet boys. There wasn’t that in me – I couldn’t have done it, but I was very envious. I think I wanted her approval. She went to art school and used to make all her own clothes. And I felt very pathetic in comparison.

  Being overshadowed as the youngest child was what Victoria blamed for her early passivity. The effect of being put down, overlooked and patronised would linger even after her sisters had left Bury. ‘It took me a long time to get the adrenaline and energy together to say, “I am going to go for it”.’ The treatment she received from her sisters not only taught Victoria the importance of developing a thick skin, it also formed her determined nature. ‘It made me, has made me, very competitive – so I’m glad really. Because it made me want to get even with them!’

  Victoria’s sensitivity to her looks blighted her formative years and turned her into a virtual recluse. Bury 4645 was not telephoned often and few friends visited Birtle Edge House, which was a blessing as it meant the state of the house did not become public knowledge at school. Stanley and Helen shared the chores, but housework was evidently not a priority. Helen was a hoarder and thought nothing of collecting bits of timber from building sites, buying job lots of stage costumes and purchasing masses of books. She even accumulated 200 shoe lasts for the left foot. Stanley added to the clutter with his 1930s sheet music and collection of old dance band 78s, which he played on an old wind-up record player.

  ‘The house was in a really bad state,’ said Joan Lloyd. ‘My son, Paul, was an apprentice plumber and he did some work there. He couldn’t believe it, it was a shambles. Dirty and tatty.’

  Gigg Lane Social Club on Friday nights and the Farmer’s Arms were the in-places to go in 1960s Bury, but while her classmates looked forward to an illicit rum and Coke, a dance and a furtive snog, Victoria stayed at home. ‘I couldn’t go to clubs with my mates because if someone had told me I was ugly I wouldn’t have coped. I wasn’t good-looking. And I knew the score. Lads don’t say, “She looks a bit rough but God, she’s funny.”’ Never learning to dance was one of Victoria’s biggest regrets.

  The closest she got to socialising with her classmates out of school was occasionally stopping off at Hilary Wills’ house for a cup of tea on the way home if the snow was really bad, before taking a short-cut home across Walmersley golf course. Even within school Victoria felt isolated and was not a mixer. ‘I don’t like to exaggerate this too much. I wasn’t completely unpopular or anything like that but I didn’t feel I was in the mainstream with people who were really having a wonderful time.’ She said she experienced a sense of ‘dislocation’ from those around her and was not so much unpopular as not needed by anybody.

  The idea that the national press would one day lay siege to the school and even try to gain
entry through a toilet window just to get a photograph of her would have seemed like an impossible fantasy to Victoria back then. But that is exactly what happened at the 1989 school reunion. The press had presumably been alerted by an interview Victoria had granted the Sunday Times a month earlier, in which she announced she would be attending. On the day of the reunion the school register was used to ensure old girls only were admitted into the school.

  Back in the 1960s Victoria only existed on the sidelines. ‘I’d look at the other girls and wish I could be like them, interested in boys, meeting in the Wimpy Bar on Saturday mornings and going to discos,’ she said. Her poor self-image, combined with low self-esteem, meant she was even reluctant to acknowledge her burgeoning musical and comedic skills. ‘She’d put her own talents down and be very modest. She didn’t have a very high opinion of her capabilities at all,’ said Gail Branch. Secretly, though, Victoria would treasure any compliments and carefully write them down in her diary.

  There were opportunities to socialise outside school, but her motive was music, not friendship, and Victoria joined Bury Orchestra and Bury Military Band. Robert Jackson, who coincidentally later lived in the former Wood home on Tottington Road, still remembered Victoria’s arrival at the military band. ‘She must have been about twelve when she joined. There was an open day to attract new members one Sunday. I remember Vicky turning up with a trumpet. She was one of the youngest there.’

  Armed with her trumpet, Victoria left Jericho every Wednesday and Sunday for practices at Elton Conservative Club. Band secretary Eric Bentley felt sorry for her and would sometimes drive her back to Birtle after rehearsals. ‘She usually had to make her own way home. Her parents didn’t seem to be bothered about her. They just weren’t interested.’