Victoria Wood

by Neil Brandwood

  It was a valuable experience nonetheless, as it proved to Victoria that she did have reserves of confidence and could perform for an indifferent audience. Freed by this knowledge she began to play her comic songs in Birmingham pubs and folk clubs. She also entered another talent contest, this time in a Birmingham nightclub, where she came third on the clapometer (which she later discovered was nothing but a vanity case covered in paper).

  It was around this time that Victoria got the only ‘normal’ job she would ever have. It said something about her growing confidence that she could take on that most sociable of professions and become a barmaid. Still at university, she worked nights at The Sportsman, a pub which was near the Pebble Mill studios and her bedsit. Because of its location it was frequented by a number of BBC producers, one of whom invited Victoria to a party. She accepted and during the course of the evening, began entertaining them with her songs.

  In an interview given years later, she said the producers were so impressed that they invited her to audition at the television studios the following day. Putting it down to drunken enthusiasm, she thought nothing of it until they phoned her the next morning to tell her they were all waiting for her. She jumped on the bus, auditioned, and was given a job singing on a local arts slot at 10 p.m. on Friday nights at £33 a time. ‘They weren’t songs I particularly wanted to write,’ she said, ‘I just wanted to be on television.’

  The show, broadcast in the Midlands only, was a four-part series called St John On … in which St John Howell took a lighthearted look at Midland lifestyles and curiosities. She was commissioned to write four songs for each of the half-hour programmes with the themes of Home, Money, Food and Fashion. The songs – which included one about a student returning home during the holidays and finding the parental background embarrassing – were written in the university music practice rooms, which she would sneak into with only a carton of milk for company.

  Producer Edmund Marshall, who described Victoria as ‘a great, undeveloped talent’, said the songs were witty, cabaret-style numbers. They were also all two minutes, ten seconds in length because one of the BBC group told Victoria this was the perfect length. It was a rule she adhered to religiously for years.

  She told the Sunday Mercury: ‘My ambition is to develop my songwriting and performing talents as far as possible.’ And, just five days off her twenty-first birthday, it looked like she was already beginning to get things together. Not only did she have a television contract, she had also recorded a five-track demo tape of songs which was in the hands of a record company.

  The moderate success with her own material – she made a couple more television appearances on the local folk programme Springs To Mind – nudged Victoria yet further away from the idea of becoming an actress after graduating. ‘I thought, “Hang on, I don’t look or sound like Ophelia, and I don’t want to lose two stone or my Northern accent.”’

  The television work also strengthened her conviction that her way was right. She said she was too conceited to copy anybody else’s style because she didn’t think any other performers were worth aspiring to be like.

  Whether these early television appearances were enjoyed by Victoria is unknown. ‘It’s difficult to say,’ said Gerry McCarthy. ‘She was always so objective and amusing about what was going on in this wide-eyed way that she had.’

  Although Victoria did not request help from him when preparing her television work, she did seek advice on a more personal matter, namely, should she yield to one of the Pebble Mill producer’s sexual advances in order to help her career?

  ‘She only asked me really should she sleep with her producer,’ said McCarthy. ‘I think we were discussing the likely state of this person’s underwear and I think we came to the conclusion if we could be sure that the underwear would not be so appalling, maybe one could go through with it. The trouble was you couldn’t say “Show me your underwear first.”’

  There is no indication at all that Victoria did succumb to the casting couch. However, years later her take on sexual politics would certainly justify an action such as sleeping one’s way into a job. ‘I believe feminism is absolutely to revel in your own sex and take advantage of every opportunity it gives you.’

  After years of judging herself, Victoria took the drastic step of letting the country give its verdict when she auditioned for the television talent show New Faces. The programme was first broadcast in September 1973 and was an immediate hit, attracting huge audiences. The ATV show had an irresistible appeal: contestants would be routinely humiliated by the panel of judges, and the viewing public could participate and sit in judgement. Originally the audience could phone in to vote but such was the enthusiasm that the GPO switchboard in Birmingham was burned out, and so there was a switch to postal voting, with a coupon in the TV Times.

  A television talent show had been Les Dawson’s passport to fame. He was a resident of Bury between 1967 and 1974 and having such an example on her doorstep may have partly inspired Victoria to follow suit. But whereas Dawson got his break on Opportunity Knocks, which used amateurs, Victoria’s six previous television appearances meant her only option was New Faces with its professionals-only policy.

  The audition was held at the La Dolce Vita nightclub on Queensway, Birmingham, and had it not been for a friend who was a make-up artist on the show and who ensured Victoria’s application was at the top of the pile, she would never have been seen that day. She found herself surrounded by teenage rock groups, a troupe of old ladies in bonnets and wheelchairs singing ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’ and a dwarf who kept singing ‘Welcome To My World’. Under such circumstances it was no wonder Victoria accepted ‘a tablet’ off someone. Whatever it was it worked, and producer Les Cocks, who was the sole judge of which acts would appear on the show itself, was impressed with her and awarded Victoria a place.

  A total of 16,000 acts had auditioned all over the country and Victoria was just one of 300 who was successful. The odds were even greater than they had been for a place on the university course, but still, Victoria felt unworthy. ‘The rest of the hopefuls were a bit snotty. And I was ridden with guilt,’ she said. ‘They thought they should have won and they were right. They were all better than I was.’

  Between the audition and the competition itself, Victoria graduated from university with what Gerry McCarthy described as a lousy degree. ‘If she didn’t want to do something she probably would simply not do it and I think her willingness to see life as a very unsatisfactory process extended to her university career,’ he said. It was not until 1996 that Birmingham University decided to award its old girl with an honorary degree (she collected others from Lancaster University (1989), Sunderland University (1994), Bolton Institute (1995) and Manchester University (1998).

  Victoria decided she was not good enough to be a serious actress and believed the only good parts for somebody shaped like her were in comedy. ‘But you couldn’t say that then,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t say “I’m in comedy” – there was no such thing. So I said “Well, I’m going to be an actress”, and I sort of vaguely imagined I’d be like Hattie Jacques or something. I hadn’t really thought it through. On some basic level I wanted to be a comedian but there weren’t any women comedians.’

  She put herself at the mercy of the British public on Saturday 12 October 1974 when she made her debut on New Faces. Dressed in a borrowed frock and seated behind a piano and a model of The Magic Roundabout, Victoria performed a song of her own composition called ‘Dorothy’. Among those cheering her on was Celia Imrie, a friend of a university friend of Victoria’s.

  On the show Victoria was up against Davy Wanda, a unicycling ventriloquist from Whitby; Liverpool songstress Carol Christmas; singer Eddie Buchanan from Manchester; the group Wytchwood from Wetherby; and Chas and Anabel of Bournemouth, who sang an ‘old-tyme medley’. In between acts 22-stone ‘mirthquake’ Eric Fields kept the audience entertained.

  Victoria won. She scored highly in the categories of presentation, co
ntent and star quality, gaining 116 points out of a possible 120. After collecting her £75 appearance fee Victoria caught the bus home to Priory Road in time to see Joyce Grenfell on BBC2’s Face The Music. That same day there was an interview with Hattie Jacques in the Daily Mirror. She revealed her main ambition was to do a two-woman television comedy series with her best friend Joan Sims.

  Winning New Faces lifted Victoria to a much-needed high, and she excitedly told Birmingham’s Evening Mail: ‘I just cannot believe all this is happening to me. This is my major breakthrough.’ Bursting with enthusiasm she revealed her ultimate ambition was to do a one-woman show on television or on the stage – she had already got a trunkful of songs ‘for when the time comes’. But even on the bus ride home there were niggling doubts. ‘I was clueless about getting work. And I’d already shown my act. That was all I had.’

  The problem was she was performing sophisticated cabaret, something that had died out with Noël Coward. Les Cocks said: ‘The show used to get lots of phone calls and there was very little comment about her although she’d won the show. And the other interesting thing was that we’d had no calls from any agents.’

  The solution came when an agent, a retired band leader from Hove, phoned offering his services. Because he was a friend of Les Cocks, Victoria believed he was a safe bet and agreed to him becoming her agent. It would turn out to be one of the biggest mistakes of her career.

  As someone who deplored bad manners in others, Victoria did not read the three-year exclusive management contract before she signed, feeling that it would be rude to do so and would look like she did not trust him. Any doubts she may have had did not have time to take hold because, on 9 November, she returned to the ATV studios for the first of the New Faces winners’ shows which were held every eight weeks throughout the series. If she won that she would automatically gain a place in the grand final.

  Her rivals this time were impressionists Les Dennis and Tony Maiden; Leicester pop group Mint; the group Jess and the Gingerbread; and eight-year-old singer Malandra Newman. The show’s adults-only policy was relaxed for little Malandra, provoking an outcry by the public and no doubt leaving her fellow competitors feeling rather sour towards her. In later life Malandra Burrows, as she became known, achieved stardom in the soap opera Emmerdale. Les Dennis, too, would make a name for himself in the world of light entertainment.

  For someone desperately trying to establish a public identity the omens were not good for Victoria. The Evening Mail mistakenly called her ‘Christine’ and she was introduced on the show as ‘Joanna Wood’.

  Her nervousness was evident in the introductory shot of the hopefuls: she is seen drawing on a cigarette and flicking the ash on the floor. The inexperience of the guest host, a former runner-up called Nicky Martyn, also added to the unease. He tried to whip up excitement by informing the aspiring stars that they might get a recording contract or a summer season at a holiday camp if they won. In his stumbling introduction of Victoria, in which he mentioned her university credentials, he said: ‘You would expect her to go on possibly to the Old Vic or, y’know, somewhere like that, somewhere very Shakespearean. But no.’

  For this appearance Victoria wore a bright yellow shirt and dungarees. She sat in the spotlight behind a black piano and sang a song in the character of ‘Lorraine’, an office worker not looking forward to her marriage to the greasy-haired Richard who washed his Cortina more than his neck. She anticipated the vicious whispers about her at the wedding reception and the false bonhomie of the men married to boring women. She despondently concluded that marriage was better than staying single or death. She didn’t know what she could do instead.

  The dourness and poignancy of the song must have confused an audience that was anticipating some saucy, upbeat number. Although she did not win, she did receive praise from the panel of judges. ‘Hasn’t this girl got a great deal of magic, a great deal of charm,’ said Derek Hobson. ‘She’s so cute-looking on screen.’ Victoria smiled at the compliment, but her face dropped a few seconds later when he likened her to a female Jake Thackery. ‘I really think this is a lovely singer, a lovely, clever song,’ Hobson continued. His only criticism was that her piano playing was a little lacking in depth. It needed more ‘oomph’ to help carry the song along, he said, ‘particularly in all those packed clubs I’m sure she’s going to be playing to.’

  The song contained the line: ‘I ought to get thin for the wedding, lose a couple of stone’ and Victoria blew Hobson a kiss when he told her: ‘Don’t lose a couple of stone because you’re lovely the way you are.’

  Losing was a blow to Victoria’s fragile self-confidence. It was the start of what she called ‘a long, drawn out, not very memorable disaster’. She got some club bookings on the strength of New Faces, but her act was so bad she was rarely invited back. Her career did not so much take off, she said, as reverse into the departure lounge. Victoria then endured being ‘biffed about’ by people who thought she was too fat, not funny enough and lacking in showbiz glamour. Her idea of dressing for the part was another borrowed dress and a pair of cowboy boots. It was no wonder she spent most of that period claiming dole.

  ‘People were very dismissive of how I looked – which is very difficult at that age – and how I sounded,’ she said. ‘They seemed to think that if you spoke with a Northern accent, there must be something a little bit wrong with you.’ She pottered around miserably, growing more and more depressed. The few friends she had from university left Birmingham to take jobs elsewhere, and the isolated bedsit existence did nothing to alleviate her despair. She would often spend 14 hours a day in bed and rarely ventured outdoors. ‘I just couldn’t seem to get it together, and my belief in myself was starting to dribble away.’

  Looking back, she said:

  In my twenties I was like an unexploded bomb. There was something I wanted to do and I could not see a way of doing it. I had a real burning urge to be a comedian, or something, and I knew I was good. But I was singing little songs on television and people just said things like ‘You’re too fat, you shouldn’t wear trousers.’ I just seemed to get slapped down a lot and I didn’t have any confidence in myself.

  The sense of frustration was no doubt increased by another member of her family demonstrating what it was possible to achieve. ‘If you’ve got a creative talent, then it’s your duty to belt it out,’ Stanley Wood told the Bury Times in April 1975. It was a view that Victoria shared, but for her it was becoming increasingly difficult to find opportunities for showcasing her talent.

  Stanley was getting publicity in the North because his musical melodrama, Clogs!, was premiered at the Duke’s Playhouse in Lancaster. Set in a Lancashire village in 1887, Clogs! was inspired by The Clog Shop Chronicles written by the Revd Fred Smith of Burnley in 1890. The plot revolved around master clogger, Jabez, who felt work was more important than the villagers’ plans to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. The two sides were united by an outbreak of smallpox.

  ‘It’s the culmination of various kinds of writing,’ explained Stanley. ‘It started with a story line then certain phrases suggested songs, and the songs were developed with the help of an excellent composer, and then the whole thing took off.’ He wrote it in just three weeks during 1966, and then spent the following six years revising and rewriting it. The precision and attention to detail (though certainly not the leisurely approach) was something which Victoria inherited.

  By the time Clogs! reached the stage, Stanley was writing for Northern Drift, Talkabout, Coronation Street and Saturday afternoon radio. Despite his insurance work he spent at least two hours every night writing and revising his stock of material. ‘The art of play writing,’ he said ‘is intertwining the story lines so that something is always happening, either a crisis, a confrontation, or whatever, and everything must be logical. It is almost an engineering job.’

  His son believed Clogs! would have been a great success in the West End. ‘We discussed this many times, but it would have mean
t him giving up control,’ said Chris Foote-Wood. ‘It was his baby, he wouldn’t let go. I think Victoria’s the same. She insists on complete artistic, financial and editorial control.’

  Back in Birmingham, Victoria had no control over her career at all, thanks to her manager. His idea of building her career was to turn down all job offers except television work in the hope that a big break would come along. As far as Victoria was concerned she would have been happy doing a 20-minute performance for the West Midlands Women’s Institute, so desperate was she for a chance to develop her stage technique.

  ‘Whenever I did work live, which was very rarely, I was diabolical because I’d had no experience. My idea of an act was to put together every song I’d ever written … and just sit there and play them. I didn’t know how to walk on, how to say hello – I couldn’t play the piano and look at the audience at the same time.’

  Sitting in her bedsit eating tins of mince heated on a communal Baby Belling cooker, with only the occasional song to write for such programmes as the BBC’s Camera and the Song, it slowly dawned on Victoria that her manager simply did not like work. ‘It was easier for him to send a girl along to a TV studio than traipse around the country fixing up a support tour.’ Because she was still lacking in confidence she tolerated the situation, and thought nothing of travelling from Birmingham to Hove at her own expense whenever her manager summoned her. ‘Fatty’s not doing anything,’ he told would-be employers in Victoria’s presence. She silently took the abuse because she blamed herself for being overweight.

  In many respects, Victoria was fortunate not to reach the New Faces All Winners Gala Final at the London Palladium. Broadcast live in July 1975, it was a disaster. Badly presented, under-rehearsed, and with the sound off-balance, the hapless hopefuls died a death. They included 16-year-old impressionist Lenny Henry, Sheffield comedienne Marti Caine (who won) and impressionist Tony Maiden, who had defeated Victoria in her second New Faces appearance.