Victoria Wood

by Neil Brandwood

  A short break in Victoria’s packed schedule allowed Geoffrey to take a turn at working and he appeared in pantomime at Bradford. But it was not long before Victoria was back in action, making a documentary on carers for Comic Relief and recommencing the tour in April. It took her to Wolverhampton, Nottingham, Halifax, Scarborough, Portsmouth, Birmingham, Cardiff, Bristol and Reading. By the time she played her last show at the Liverpool Empire she had been seen by more than half a million people.

  Although she loved performing live Victoria was looking to explore other areas and for all her complaints about the arduousness of life on the road she set in motion a chain of events that very nearly exhausted her mentally.

  Easter 1997

  The middle-aged woman in her regulation white overalls doles out another ladle of baked beans in the factory canteen. She started her shift at 6 a.m. but still seems strangely alert. The hungry queue of employees of Halstead’s, manufacturers of slip resistant vinyl safety floorcovering, eye her with a mixture of curiosity, suspicion and timidity.

  ‘Do you know the difference between a dick and a chicken leg?’ braves one of them. The canteen worker, with her blonde fringe peeping out from beneath her white trilby, doesn’t.

  ‘Well we’re ’avin’ a barbecue tomorrow, d’you want to come?’

  She laughs, unfazed. Strangers often feel compelled to tell her jokes. We are in Whitefield, a Northern town within the borough of Bury. Its unloveliness made it a perfect location for the gritty 1962 kitchen sink drama, A Kind of Loving, and John Schlesinger filmed scenes in Coronation Park just across the road from the factory.

  She is from round here, but as she serves up another rasher of bacon the thought does not depress her. A sudden burst of laughter from a bunch of gossiping women at one of the tables attracts her attention. She strains to eavesdrop and add to the many mental notes already stored. Later she will photograph the kitchen and canteen.

  On 23 October 1998, the canteen overalls were replaced with an expensively tailored deep-blue corduroy suit for the press launch of dinnerladies, the situation comedy that sprang from Victoria’s research at the Whitefield factory.

  Virtually all 60 seats in Screen Three of the Leicester Square Odeon were filled with journalists, eager to see Victoria’s first television series in nine years.

  She had first considered writing a situation comedy as far back as 1979 when her own particular favourites were Oh No It’s Selwyn Froggitt, Last of the Summer Wine and Fawlty Towers. But, ever the perfectionist, she had bided her time until she knew she was capable of producing something that met her own high standards.

  ‘I wanted to do something in television again after quite a long break and I also wanted it to be something where I could concentrate on the characters, which you just can’t do in a sketch show … I was very interested in what I could do with the format. It was complicated but really exciting,’ she said. Victoria added: ‘Sitcom is such a horrible phrase now. It’s almost synonymous with crap … Often writers are constructing a group of people who don’t have any reality. They’re writing without passion … Those shows never say anything. You have to really want to write a sitcom and have something to say that can only be said in that form.’

  The solitary nature of writing and touring her one-woman shows during those intervening years had also begun to take its toll and, despite the plaudits and adulation, Victoria discovered it was lonely at the top. ‘I was just concentrating on the theatre and then suddenly thought: “I’m just getting so lonely standing on stage on my own and going into the office on my own. I want to go in a room where there’s other people”,’ she said at the Little Havana Restaurant after the press screening.

  Situation comedy is the most lucrative form of television writing, but also the most demanding. Characters need to be established and sustained, plots have to be developed and carefully structured and in the increasingly accountant-led BBC, success has to be immediate. For Victoria, who happily admitted she didn’t need the ‘dosh’, it was a chance to exercise her comedy muscles. She had already explored virtually every format of television, from the talent shows, variety shows, magazine programmes, quiz shows and plays of her younger days to the sketch shows, chat shows, commercials, screenplays and documentaries of the 1980s and 1990s. Apart from hosting Question Time or reading the news, situation comedy was of the few unchartered territories left.

  Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders had already tested the water with The Vicar of Dibley and Absolutely Fabulous. Their success suggested that the transition could be smooth and something that audiences would readily accept.

  ‘I’m interested in the emotions of small things,’ said Victoria. ‘I tend to look at life from the chip pan level. Finding the universal truth from the mundane.’ It was not surprising therefore that she should choose to set her situation comedy in a factory canteen. The idea had first entered her mind in 1995, but her punishing tour schedule meant she had to put it on hold. Expounding on her choice of location she said:

  I wanted it set where I would have no outside filming, it would just be in that setting so it had to be flexible enough so that people could come in and out, that they could interact with customers and could also interact amongst themselves, they could be working or not working, they could be having a tea break.

  The public still regarded Victoria as a down-to-earth Northern woman and it was an image that she did not go out of her way to dispel. The affection with which she was held and the belief that she was ‘one of us’ remained important to her. She knew from her own youth how damaging exclusion could be to her own psyche, and commercial considerations meant she could not afford to alienate her fan base by being ostentatious about her now wealthier lifestyle. But Victoria never had any real experience of working-class life. This posed a problem when it came to writing about life in a factory canteen. As she herself said: ‘Good sitcoms … show you a world that you didn’t previously know existed.’ To gain an understanding of it she despatched her personal assistant, Amy Whittaker, on a recce to Halstead’s and another factory near Manchester, but it was the Whitefield firm’s canteen that suited Victoria’s needs. ‘It had the right number of women and was the right size of factory,’ she explained.

  The then canteen manager, Adam Ellis, got something of a surprise when Victoria phoned him herself to see if he minded her visiting. A date was fixed for early March 1997 and besides Adam, only personnel manager Jim Falcus and the chef knew about the visit in advance.

  ‘It was very low key and that’s the way she wanted to keep it,’ said Adam. ‘If we’d have announced it there would have been people queuing up to get in. She stayed for a couple of hours the first time, just to get a feel for the place. She took a load of notes and photographs and asked me a lot of questions regarding how typical the canteen was. She’s a bit of a perfectionist and she said there’s nothing worse than seeing something on the television that people who are involved in the industry know is wrong.’

  Victoria warned him that if word got out about her visit she would abandon the planned series, even if it meant losing out financially. A few weeks later she left her plush suite at Manchester’s Midland Hotel for the 30-minute drive to Halstead’s in time to start work on the 6 a.m. shift.

  ‘She wasn’t so shy that time. She didn’t speak to the customers that much but she spoke to my girls. She was mainly after characters and did a lot of watching,’ recalled Adam. ‘People were pretty shocked to find a star serving them breakfast. Quite a few of them felt embarrassed.’

  Victoria, who operated the till and served at the counter, as opposed to doing any actual cooking, clocked off at 1 p.m. and sat eating her lunch in the canteen with Amy and Adam.

  ‘She was watching and listening to what was going on around her. She took note of the ones that were loud or outspoken, what they were saying and why they were saying it,’ said Adam.

  ‘I’m very glad my many years as a lollipop lady have finally been recognised,’ was Victoria’s s
ardonic response to the announcement in June 1997 that she had been awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. It was a statement which neatly displayed her perceptive wit – there had been a push for unsung heroes to be honoured – and at the same time the self-deprecation reassured fans that she was still ‘one of them’ despite the honour. When she received the award from Prince Charles (it would be another eleven years before she met the Queen, who presented her with a CBE) that December, she took Geoffrey and the children with her, and even wore a short skirt for the occasion. Buckingham Palace was a world away from the supermarket aisles and semis her public associated her with and, perhaps mindful of this, Victoria stressed that the real highlight of the day was going to Grace’s school carol service later that afternoon and tucking into cheese sandwiches afterwards.

  The end of her UK tour saw the end of Victoria’s relationship with the Richard Stone Partnership, the agency that had represented her for 21 years. More than two decades in the business had given Victoria enough insight to be able to conduct her own affairs and she no longer required the agency’s services. She had her own successful production company for her television work, and the Phil McIntyre organisation looked after her live tours.

  Her departure from Stone coincided with Victoria’s biggest gamble yet; a test to see if she could cut it abroad. For someone so used to being lauded it was a brave decision, but also a necessary one if she was to continue to fulfil her ambition. Her television shows had been shown in Australia and New Zealand but she had never performed there live. The Antipodean tour lasted from 22 July to 8 August and Geoffrey, Grace and Henry travelled with her for an unconventional family ‘holiday’.

  ‘It was so odd because no one knew who the hell I was at all … and you think, “Right, well this is where I earn my money,”’ said Victoria. She need not have worried. Her material was only slightly adapted and travelled well, ensuring the tour was a complete sell-out.

  When she was not touring, writing, filming or promoting (a video of her latest tour and a CD collection of 10 of her old songs and four from the 1996 show were both released in 1997), Victoria supplemented her income by working the after-dinner speaking circuit. By 1998 she was the second highest-earning female speaker after Margaret Thatcher. Along with personal appearances at £16,000 a time, video sales and corporate work, this took her yearly income up to £750,000. The video of the two-year-old stage act brought more money in when it was sold to ITV and retitled Still Standing.

  14

  A WEEK AFTER Still Standing was broadcast Victoria was back up North for a final visit to the Halstead’s factory canteen. This time she was accompanied by a designer and during her three-hour stay many more photographs were taken which would inform the layout of the canteen in her situation comedy.

  The lessons she learned from writing Wood & Walters still influenced her approach to script writing and for dinnerladies, as she named the series, she followed her usual practice of overwriting. The scripts were written in a 200-page refill pad over a period of six months, with each draft taking two days to write. ‘I was just working it out as I went along,’ she explained. ‘And I had to write a few episodes to see what the hell it was all about and after I’d written three I thought “Oh, now I understand what it’s all about” and I threw those three away and started again.’ The attention to detail was minute. In episode one Dolly expresses distaste for Tom Jones because he was once pictured on the front cover of the TV Times squatting in his swimming trunks. This had indeed been an actual cover shot more than twelve years previously.

  ‘I had the idea. I had the setting. But who was I going to people it with?’ pondered Victoria. ‘I knew what I wanted to achieve, but it was a complicated journey to get there. I knew it was about a group of women in a factory canteen so I asked myself who are they? And how many? At first I thought there were about seven but I couldn’t manoeuvre seven people’s stories in half an hour. Once I got it down to five it was a lot simpler.’

  Most of the roles were written with specific actors in mind, but when it came to the other parts Victoria was determined to have a say. She sat in on auditions and her opinions carried as much weight as those of Geoff Posner and casting director Susie Bruffin. Naturally there were parts for Duncan Preston, Julie Walters, Anne Reid and Celia Imrie, and smaller parts for those who had worked with her previously and shown loyalty (Bernard Wrigley, Sue Wallace, Andrew Livingston, Peter Lorenzelli and Graham Seed). David Firman once again arranged the music.

  ‘When I got the call from Victoria asking me if I wanted to be in her sitcom it was like music to my ears,’ said Duncan Preston. ‘I hesitate to say there’s a lot of me in Stan, but I am a very orderly guy naturally, and that’s what he is. I don’t think I’m as earnest as him and whereas I like a laugh, Stan doesn’t know how to laugh. If the world were full of people like Stan it would be a chaotic disaster, but it would be a lovely place to live because there’d be no malice – there’s no malice in him. In 1954 his mum ran off with a piano tuner and all he’s had is his dad, who plays the ukulele. Stan has never married because he likes to keep all his tools in the living room.’

  Julie Walters was only too happy to be appearing with Victoria again, this time playing her crazed mother, Petula Gordeno. It was the first time she had appeared in a situation comedy apart from two lines in The Liver Birds in 1978.

  ‘When I first came up with the idea, I was determined not to use Julie,’ said Victoria. ‘People must think I can’t work with anyone else. But as I was writing it, I knew it was inevitable she would be Petula. I genuinely couldn’t think of anyone else who could do the part better. I just had to give in.’

  Walters described Petula, another in a long line of grotesque old crones, as: ‘One of those people who are always boosting her image. She is not a liar, but she embellishes absolutely everything … She fantasises and makes things bigger than they are, but some things she says are true, so you don’t always know if she’s telling the truth or not, she is someone who lives on the edge of society.’

  Like Petula, Celia Imrie’s Philippa was a character who popped in and out of the series. A Surrey refugee, Philippa was eager to please and anxious to be accepted by the girls. As Head of Human Resources and the only Southern character, Philippa was a useful contrast and point of dramatic conflict.

  The casting of Thelma Barlow as Dolly attracted most media attention. It was the actress’s first television role since leaving Coronation Street; once again Victoria had given a boost to the career of another former resident of Weatherfield.

  The two had already met socially on a number of occasions through their mutual friend, Anne Reid. ‘I don’t know whether it was something Victoria saw in us, she had seen us together as friends and we do josh one another around a lot,’ said Barlow. Victoria had been keeping an eye on the actress ever since Reid had hinted that Barlow was thinking of leaving the soap opera.

  ‘My ears went “Ping!” … I thought Thelma and Annie would be a really good twosome, I just had a good feeling about them … I just think her comedy performances on The Street were absolutely fantastic,’ said Victoria, who wrote to Barlow as soon as she announced she was quitting the soap.

  ‘I was thrilled,’ said the actress. ‘I was particularly pleased that she had such faith in me and I really didn’t want to let her down.’

  Anne Reid, who played Jean (‘down to earth, quite dry, in marriage guidance because her sex life has gone wrong’) was another fan of Victoria. ‘She’s a very good writer, that’s why I like doing it. She writes wonderful parts for women,’ she said. ‘Victoria writes the best parts, her stuff is so funny, it’s very, very real and the characters are wonderful.’

  The characters of Twinkle and Anita were the only main roles that required new actresses. ‘They were sort of floating parts, as I was waiting to see who would get the tone,’ explained Victoria. By creating two young characters Victoria was aiming to attract a younger, and therefore wider, audience.

&
nbsp; Bolton actress Maxine Peake was given the part of the inappropriately named Twinkle, who was a version of Good Fun’s Lynne. Although Peake had eventually won a scholarship for RADA she had been rejected by every amateur dramatic group in Bolton and had been turned down by the Manchester Youth Theatre and the National Youth Theatre. She applied to Manchester Polytechnic three times but, like Victoria, failed to get into its theatre school.

  Victoria obviously empathized with Peake for another reason too, and she gave her some friendly advice borne from her own bitter experience. ‘She said: “You’re fat, you’re blonde and you’re northern; you’ll get typecast”,’ said Peake, who was thrilled to find out she had passed the dinnerladies audition.

  dinnerladies was only her second part after graduating. She had previously had a small role in the Julie Walters’ film Girls Night, part of which was filmed in Bury’s Art Cinema, once frequented by the young Victoria.

  ‘Twinkle reminded me of people I went to school with,’ said Peake. ‘She is seventeen, she’s not the brightest penny in the jar, but she’s good fun, she likes to have a laugh and she’s a lovely girl underneath. I used to have friends like that at school, who were quite hard on the outside and then you found out underneath, they are quite soft. She is funny, has no dress sense whatsoever, and she doesn’t care, she’s not hung up about herself.’

  Oldham’s Shobna Gulati also benefited from Victoria’s Midas touch. ‘It’s an extraordinary part,’ said the former linguist and accomplished dancer, choreographer, comedian and singer. ‘Although Anita is Asian, she is not Asian. She is very British. That was exciting because I normally work using culture traditions from India and this has drawn on my skills as an actor. She is just extremely well written and it’s really easy to find her.’