Victoria Wood

by Neil Brandwood

  The weight Victoria lost for Nearly A Happy Ending did not stop her worrying about her shape. She hated people mentioning her weight but masochistically drew attention to it herself by naming the New Year’s Day 1981 pilot sketch show Wood & Walters: Two Creatures Great and Small.

  Although Victoria wrote the entire show and shared the acting and singing duties, Walters merited equal billing as her presence was vital in shoring up Victoria’s confidence. Even when Peter Eckersley had offered her a series, Victoria’s fundamental insecurity meant she only agreed on the understanding that Julie was in it too.

  Considering she had only written one sketch three years previously, the faith Granada placed in Victoria by giving her a show was remarkable. The pressure of expectation was felt by Victoria and she reacted by resorting to her stage show defence tactics. She still felt at her strongest with a song and a piano, which accounts for the unusually high number of four songs in the 30-minute sketch show.

  The sketches themselves concerned computer dating, keep fit class gossip, the joys of DIY and the Marriage Guidance Council, but their scarcity was a portent of the problems that would occur when Wood & Walters became a series.

  Victoria later described the pilot show as dire, but to her great surprise it was nominated for a BAFTA award, along with The Stanley Baxter Series (which won), The Kenny Everett Video Show and The Two Ronnies.

  Although Victoria did not appear in her next project for Granada, Happy Since I Met You, she hung around for the filming. While in Manchester she performed a one-off show at the Royal Exchange Theatre and in May, keen to build on her stand-up routine, she undertook a five-date tour of the North West. It is not widely known that during this period she was also the musical support for Radio 2’s The Little and Large Party. Earlier, she had written material for Su Pollard to perform on Granada’s The Comedians. Understandably, neither of these jobs appeared on her CV.

  While Geoffrey was away in Margate for the summer season, Victoria busied herself writing the Wood & Walters television series, which distracted her from nervously anticipating the reaction to Happy Since I Met You. ‘I thought it was about time I wrote something I wasn’t in,’ she said of the play. The decision was probably prompted by self-defence rather than modesty. Sensitive to criticism, any hint that she was somehow lacking, made her recoil. The critics had made it plain in previous reviews that Walters was the better actress and, as at school, if Victoria could not compete she withdrew. Her increasingly heavy workload may have also been a factor. Besides, she realised that stand-up was becoming her real strength and an area in which she dominated.

  Happy Since I Met You had the same team as Victoria’s previous television plays, with Peter Eckersley producing and Baz Taylor directing. It was shown on 9 August 1981 and once again it got a Sunday evening slot. The gritty realism Victoria used to chart a relationship was a perfect antidote to the fairy tale marriage fever that had swept across the nation with the marriage of Charles and Diana.

  The role of Frances Gordon, a 28-year-old drama teacher, was obviously Walters’. Her boyfriend was Jim Smith, a placid, struggling actor who holds the distinction of being the first major male character that Victoria wrote realistically and sympathetically.

  The role was awarded to Duncan Preston, best known to the public as PC Fred Pooley in the 1973 television series Hunter’s Walk. The RADA-trained actor had grown up in Bradford and started out as a lorry driver until he was spotted in amateur theatre. Victoria and Walters, in high spirits after a long lunch, sat in on his audition. ‘It was absolutely terrifying, but I read a couple of scenes and then Julie Walters said “Ooh, I want him to do it because he’s so big” and she jumped up and gave me a playful punch,’ recalled Preston. ‘Later I rang my agent to tell him it had been a horrific interview, but he said I’d been offered the part.’ The bond between Victoria and Walters was intimidating to the newcomer who likened joining the cast to entering a secret club.

  It is apt that the play begins at Christmas since its framework resembles A Christmas Carol. Outwardly chirpy, Fran is fundamentally unhappy. She is presented with various case studies of relationships to mull over. Her neighbour (Eileen Mayers) is not in one and faces a lonely Christmas; a sister, Olwen (Sue Wallace), is embittered and in the throes of a divorce; another sister, Karen (Tracey Ullman) is devoted to and dependent on her boyfriend; a friend, Mary (Carol Leader), talks about the emotional benefits and conveniences of being in a relationship – it’s less boring than being alone and better than going through the rigmarole of having to get used to being with someone new; a colleague, Judith (Kathryn Apanowicz) illustrates the material benefits of marriage.

  Fran then has to analyse her own past relationships and make a decision whether or not to enter into a new one with Jim – whom she meets at a dire dinner party – in order to ensure a happy future. Along the way she faces pressure from her family, Jim himself, and even her pupils who buy her make-up for Christmas to help her get a bloke.

  Fran and Jim’s first date is in a wholefood vegetarian restaurant (the healthfood movement would become a regular target for Victoria). Fran launches into a speech about her new resolve regarding relationships. She does not want a one-night stand or a big heavy relationship. She won’t let him into her flat in case it puts him off her. She tells Jim that she is determined not to repeat past mistakes by changing to suit the man she is with. She decides sex would be too much of a risk; afterwards he would go off her and she would be miserable again. The way she reels off her intentions is every bit as clinical as Maureen’s approach to sex in Nearly A Happy Ending. Attempting to control Love is of course futile. It is a gamble but Fran adopts Victoria’s musical advice, holds her breath, takes a jump and ends up in bed with Jim.

  She is in love with him and they move in together, but she has anxieties about being regarded as his appendage. Romance is replaced by banality and the little things begin to irritate her. In a playful mood Jim attempts to seduce her. Fran’s response is to ask him to get some bin-liners.

  Fran grows increasingly unsympathetic and crabby. Jim has a cold and even his sniffing irritates her. A walk in the park develops into a row and poor Jim eventually snaps. She tells him she is fed up of never being alone and having to explain every little thing. To her, a trouble shared is a trouble dragged out until bedtime. They give each other a slap.

  Back at the flat there is another row, this time triggered by Christmas cards, and a rather unnerving fight breaks out – such was the force of one of Walters’s slaps that Preston got a swollen cheek. Fran leaves for a friend’s cottage but, in an update of Brief Encounter, Jim catches up with her at the train station cafe. Fran tells him she loves him but knows she makes him miserable. He tells her he loves her and she reveals she had already decided to give the relationship another try. She affectionately points out that his shirt is untucked, signifying that her irritation has transformed into tenderness.

  The shifting nature of their relationship was brilliantly charted by Victoria in the episodic song ‘Living Together’. In the early days of Fran and Jim’s romance she sings of the fun that living together brings. Living together then becomes work. In time it becomes mad, like sharing a prison cell.

  The use of high street/brand names was, partly, Victoria’s way of rooting her plays in reality, but it is ironic that this, the most naturalistic of her three television plays, should feature so few. She downplayed the namechecks too, and on the gynaecological front, only sanitary towels were inserted into the script.

  All the other hallmarks were present: raffia; rarefication (an engagement ring is a ‘diamond half hoop’); advertising jargon (a home is a ‘three-bedroomed executive bungalow with Georgian portico’); unfashionable garments of particular fabric (nylon quilty housecoat, an angora jumper and a lime-green canvas coat dress with mandarin collar); quirky figurative terms (Fran says she has got hands like the Magna Carta and breath like a car crash); and afflictions (hospitalisation with a neck injury caused by unscrew
ing a jar of beetroot).

  Nuns are not only referred to, but embodied by Fidelis Morgan, a fellow student of Victoria’s at Birmingham. Similarly, we get to see an auntie in the flesh. In her previous plays characters had quoted and alluded to various aunts – an irony since Victoria never knew any of her own – but in Happy Since I Met You Majorie Sudell is a comic highlight as Auntie Edith. She inflicts herself on the Gordon family Christmas and gives such miserly presents as a knitted waistcoat to be shared and a toilet roll holder.

  Specific detail from Victoria’s own past crept in via the mention of the Farmer’s Arms pub. This was the Bury hostelry where her classmates socialised while Victoria stayed at home. Also worth a mention is the headwear of Fran’s neighbour (Eileen Mayers). The beret would feature often in the years to come.

  The play showed Victoria still had some shortcomings as a playwright. Songs were once again favoured over speech to convey deeper emotions, and there were rather too many scenes of Fran soliloquising in the mirror. But the Daily Mail’s Mary Kenny rated it the best thing she had seen in a long time, remarking that Victoria’s dialogue had the idiomatic drollness of Les Dawson with the refinement of Jean Anouilh. On the other hand, the Guardian’s Stanley Reynolds complained: ‘It was padded out with vulgar speeches … lines delivered as if they were heroic truths, as if they were not only great gems of wit but also terribly socially significant.’

  Victoria achieved her aim of appearing in a film in the September of 1981, but it was far from the grandiose project she had envisaged for herself. It was a sign of her growing reputation that she was invited to perform in The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball alongside some of the leading lights of British comedy. The show, an Amnesty International Gala, was filmed and recorded over three nights at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and later released as a video and LP. Victoria shared the bill with such luminaries as Rowan Atkinson, Alan Bennett, John Bird, Jasper Carrott, Graham Chapman, Billy Connolly, Dame Edna Everage, John Fortune, Griff Rhys Jones, Alexei Sayle and John Wells. The only other female performer on the bill was Pamela Stephenson, but since she was so closely associated with the Not The Nine O’Clock News team, a role Victoria had turned down, it meant Victoria had a unique place in the line-up. Recalling the shows she said: ‘On the first night I died the death, and on the second night I had to go on and swear, because that was the only way I could compete. I was following such filth, I sounded like Mary Poppins.’

  The remainder of her year was spent rehearsing and recording the Wood & Walters series while Geoffrey was in pantomime at Newcastle. It was not a happy experience as, shortly before work on the series began, Victoria’s mentor Peter Eckersley died of cancer. It was a tremendous blow to her as he had been one of the few people she could trust. He was important not only as a friend, but as an experienced and critical eye. As a result of his loss the series was without an anchor.

  ‘He had lots of ideas for the series … but he never told me what they were. His value to me was inestimable,’ said Victoria. ‘He had a marvellous eye for what was unnecessary and great attention to detail. He had liked the first material for the series but never saw any of the other stuff.’

  Brian Armstrong took over as producer and Victoria was not impressed, complaining that he did not know what it was all about. Although Duncan Preston appeared in a couple of the sketches, Victoria was also of the opinion that several unsuitable actors had been hired.

  In times of stress her critical faculties sometimes failed her, as witnessed during Good Fun. Not being used to writing a series, she had not anticipated the sheer volume of material that was required for Wood & Walters and only wrote enough for six half hours. Quality control was an unavailable luxury and when she did cut out poor material it left the series a whole show short. That was why episode six became a ‘best of’ compilation, a measure unthinkable in television today. Additional pressure came from seeing her comedy partner’s stock begin to soar – 1982 was the year in which Walters would appear in both Alan Bleasdale’s Boys From The Blackstuff and Alan Bennett’s television play Intensive Care. Work would also begin on her first film, playing opposite Michael Caine in Educating Rita. Meanwhile Victoria’s One Cal television advert (in which she put profit before principle to sing the praises of a diet drink), and her appearances on Radio 4’s Just A Minute kept her financially afloat.

  A more appropriate studio audience might have helped Victoria’s self-confidence, but the pensioners Granada imported for Wood & Walters did not appreciate her sense of humour. Before one sketch, warm-up man Ted Robbins had to explain the concept of a boutique and on another occasion he was so desperate to get a reaction from the stony faces that he actually mooned them. During one recording a disgusted audience member was overheard saying to her friend: ‘You realise that we’re missing Brideshead for this.’

  Up until this period the one unchanging source of confidence for Victoria had been that she had no rivals. As a female comedian she was unique and possessed a distinctive style. But now even this insurance policy was beginning to crumble. A young and largely unknown Rik Mayall had been given his own spot on Wood & Walters as Mitch, a chauvinistic feminist, and he enlightened Victoria that there were other female comics out there who were not of the working men’s club ilk. He told her about Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders and Victoria later admitted that she grudgingly thought they sounded funny and was consequently concerned that they might invade her territory. As a result she steered clear of them for years. The Lancashire alternative comedian Jenny Eclair, who had filmed slots for Wood & Walters, found herself edited out when the series was aired.

  The ‘Two Creatures Great And Small’ adjunct was dropped for the series, but the critics had got to Victoria, or ‘the fat one who delights in playing puddings’ as the Daily Mirror described her. Even though she had started buying her clothes from Fiorucci and having her hair cut at Vidal Sassoon, her self-image was still extremely fragile and some of the sketches in Wood & Walters had a savagely masochistic streak.

  ‘I would set myself up as a victim and Julie would be the cruel one … I think that was my own chip on my shoulder and my own insecurity about being fat or Northern or whatever I felt insecure about I worked through in those sketches,’ she explained. In the sketch ‘Skin Care’, for instance, Walters plays a sales assistant on the cosmetics counter who destroys Victoria’s self-confidence, but much more savage is ‘The Boutique’. When Victoria requests a size 14, Walters, again playing the assistant, informs her that it is a boutique, not the elephant house. The insults come thick and fast, with Walters complaining that it is depressing dealing with the overweight all day long and expressing her reluctance to let obese people in the cubicles in case they sweat on the wallpaper. She calls her ‘Porky’ in much the same way that Victoria’s first manager had called her ‘Fatty’ and likens an eight-stoner to a waterbed with legs.

  The series included a version of ‘Leader Of The Pack’ sung by Walters, ‘Northerners’, discussed earlier, and ‘What We Find’. Although only 29 Victoria tackled the ageing process in this bouncy song, which she premiered at the Bolton Festival. She highlights the Canute-like futility of fighting cellulite, falling bosoms, grey hair and dentures and she ridicules the preventative measures (‘You rub your neck before you sleep with cream that’s made from bits of sheep’). Here the textile of choice is ‘crimplene’.

  Of all the songs that featured in the series, ‘Don’t Do It’ a duet sung by Victoria and Walters, was the most startling. Stripped of brand names and bare of humour, this was a plea for life to be lived without compromise that seemed to come from Victoria’s own experiences. In it she depicts the bleakness of a dead marriage to warn of the dangers of simply accepting an unhappy situation. Perhaps reflecting how her own drive had helped her through the 1970s, she formalises her own philosophy. What could be worse than the pain and stupidity of a lifetime of nothing? she asks. It’s one life and one chance that is easily ruined, why miss out on laughter, joy and elation?
It’s soft to give in or give up or go under. The message ‘Don’t Do It’ is repeated throughout. ‘Still you keep on smiling so the pain cannot be seen’, sang Liz in Good Fun. But in ‘Don’t Do It’ Victoria asks ‘Why bother smiling in public and privately scheming?’ and advocates shouting, kicking and screaming.

  The first episode of Wood & Walters, which was broadcast on Sunday, 17 January 1982, included the sketch ‘The Woman With 740 Children’ in which Victoria played the unfortunate mother who had overdosed on a fertility drug. Much to Victoria’s surprise and bemusement Granada used 70 real babies, including one from Rochdale who shared her name. Victoria’s attitude had not softened to those who dared to write in and complain about her work. One foolhardy correspondent took exception to the use of the babies, wondering whether Victoria would be using cripples and blind people next, to which Victoria replied ‘What a good idea.’

  Elsewhere in the series we were introduced to Dotty who like Betty in Good Fun was another middle-aged Northern grotesque which Walters delighted in playing. Dressed in shocking pink, she dispensed advice and had no embarrassment at mentioning her groin strain caused after she got carried away behind the cistern with a crevice tool. In many ways Dotty was an early incarnation of Kitty, who Patricia Routledge would bring vividly to life in a later series, Victoria Wood As Seen On TV.