Victoria Wood

by Neil Brandwood

  The show resulted in some of Victoria’s best ever reviews. ‘A wonderful evening of shared humanity and joy in the company of the funniest woman in Britain’, said the Daily Mail. In the Observer Stephanie Merritt described the show as ‘a sustained two hours of brilliant material and unflagging energy’. And the Daily Telegraph’s Charles Spencer praised material ‘that is as humane as it is hilarious’. The Guardian’s Brian Logan, on the other hand, was disappointed that Victoria relied as heavily on ‘cheap scatology’ as she did on perceptiveness.

  ‘I admired the comic construction while feeling deflated by the low-horizoned world view that the routine propagates,’ he wrote. ‘There’s nothing here to challenge anyone’s cosy sense of England as a place of eccentricity, self-deprecation and mild social ineptitude. This is well-worn – too well-worn – Wood territory. It’s time for something new.’

  Industrious as ever, Victoria managed to fit in more television work despite touring commitments and, in October 2001, she presented two one-hour BBC documentaries charting the history of the sketch show from its origin in music hall to the present day.

  The Dad’s Army documentary she had presented a year earlier had received a favourable response from the critics, but their reaction to Victoria Wood’s Sketch Show Story was much different. ‘A deeply unsatisfying programme’, ‘Just another easy-on-the-brain, easy-on-the-budget anthology of comedy favourites’ they wrote.

  The documentaries were rather superficial canters through the development of the sketch show with contributions from such talking heads as John Cleese and Julie Walters. Victoria penned and performed in a couple of sketches in which she deftly deconstructed the comedy sketch, but the real treat was a new episode of ‘Acorn Antiques’ in which Mrs Overall was shot by armed robbers.

  Victoria was credited with presenting duties only and the programme suffered from such a limited input by her, prompting Christopher Matthew to remark in the Daily Mail: ‘Her comic genius was imperceptible and the script could as easily have been delivered by a speak-your-weight machine.’

  Victoria’s operation and tour meant that her most ambitious project to date had to be postponed. The previous year, while travelling through the West End in a taxi, Victoria was tickled by the idea of a poster advertising Acorn Antiques: The Musical! Aside from private amusement she was aware of the commercial potential of such a venture, reasoning ‘it was the strongest brand in my back catalogue.’

  Sir Trevor Nunn, who had previously written a ‘very encouraging’ letter to her, was enthusiastic when she went to the National Theatre to pitch her idea and there was a tentative plan to stage it at the National for Christmas 2001.

  Victoria’s 26-year relationship with Geoffrey came to an end in the autumn of 2002. Since Victoria admitted she had not seen it coming, it can be assumed that Geoffrey instigated the separation. Indeed, within four months of him moving out he was photographed kissing his tour manager, Helen Morris-Brown.

  For Victoria, who had always believed they would go on ‘until we were 99’, the end of the marriage forced her to reassess her celebrated powers of perception.

  ‘You look back at the good bits and the bad bits and you think, were the good bits that good?’ she said. ‘You churn the whole thing over and oh, it’s exhausting, trying to make sense of something that, in the end, you can’t make sense of. But it shakes your perception of yourself on a really basic level. You think of yourself as part of a couple, and then you’re not. It takes getting used to…. And what’s odd is, the person that you are most intimate with is the person you cannot discuss this terrible situation with.’

  Failure had become an alien concept to Victoria and experience had shown her that her way was the right way. However, the break-up made her reflect on some of her past behaviour.

  ‘I take a lot of responsibility. If I fucked up, then I bear the consequences,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel hard done by. I’ve felt very guilty about my part in it. I felt a failure, completely. That’s quite hard to live with. If you’re quite a punishing sort of person anyway, then: woah, you’ve suddenly got the biggest mallet to whack yourself over the head with.’

  She said she felt ‘like one of those cartoon people that steps over a cliff … their legs are moving but there’s nothing underneath.’ Music provided some relief and Victoria would often lie down and let herself be soothed by Arvo Pärt’s Tabula Rasa.

  An overly analytical person at the best of times, Victoria examined and re-examined herself, eager to find a cause for the disintegration of the marriage. She had viewed their togetherness as a ‘loyalty pact’ but realised that the assumption had led to a degree of complacency, which enabled them to behave in a worse way than if they were less sure of the strength of the partnership.

  She also faced the unwelcome fact that she had inherited certain negative traits from her mother. ‘There was lots of yelling,’ she said. ‘I became a replica of my mother, acquiring her short temper. I started to put myself in the same situations and picked up her patterns of behaviour. I’m not happy about that. I shouted a great deal – not at the children – but I did argue a lot with Geoffrey. We set each other off.’

  Therapy once again helped her to deal with the upset and she was assured that her grief was perfectly normal. ‘Normally it’s irritating not to be unique,’ she said, ‘but in this case it was a huge comfort to me.’

  Victoria had always intended to retire when she reached 50 but embarking on a new life as a middle-aged single woman seemed to propel her career onwards. Her previous disappointments and unhappiness served as inspirations and motivations and the end of her marriage may have done the same. Shortly before the shock separation she was in danger of being content – the enemy of ambition. Over the years she had shed her insecurities and neuroses, changed her physical shape and cauterised any unwelcome emotional entanglements. She went from being a cuddly curiosity to a fiercely professional and polished performer. But along the way she lost some of the messy humanity that allowed her to empathise so well with all those other disorderly, frustrated and unfulfilled lives. The raw, chainsmoking overeater who often stayed in bed for 14 hours at a time certainly made mistakes, but she also possessed an endearing clumsiness and a warmth that later became absent.

  Her 50th birthday signalled the shift up a gear. Far from locking herself away and giving in to depression and doubt, she threw a large all-female party for friends. It was at this party that she first mentioned the Acorn Antiques musical to Julie Walters, who responded enthusiastically.

  In her youth, Victoria dealt with disappointment, rejection and failure by comfort eating and retreating into a slothful mode. In early 2003, however, she chose physical exercise to help divert her focus from the end of her marriage and began a 12-week training programme for a marathon walk with her friend, the actress Harriet Thorpe.

  The Playtex Moonwalk appealed to Victoria’s sense of the ridiculous and her zeal for fitness. The night-time 26-mile charity walk involves around 15,000 women wearing bras trekking through the streets of London to raise money for breast cancer charities.

  She had successfully completed the walk the previous year and gladly threw herself into it again. Hoping to publicise the cause, she wrote, presented and was the executive producer of a subsequent 30-minute ITV documentary. The documentary was notable for Victoria’s first prime time use of the word ‘fuck’. ‘We’re doing this for our breasts,’ she told the assembled walkers. ‘It’s doing fuck all for our bunions but never mind!’

  Work had always been an outlet for the adult Victoria and by the summer of 2003 she had completed the book and the music for Acorn Antiques: The Musical! It was not yet public knowledge and when interviewed Victoria only revealed she was writing a musical about the lives of four women.

  During the same year she also wrote and filmed a BBC documentary on a subject that was very personal to her. Victoria’s Big Fat Documentary was a well-researched, intelligent and thought-provoking piece of television and the t
wo-part, two-hour documentary shown in January 2004 was aptly timed to give food for thought to those embarking on a new year diet.

  The project saw her investigating the dieting industry – ‘If dieting works you’d only have to do it once, wouldn’t you?’ – exploring the reasons behind eating disorders and looking at how people can be exploited and shamed because of their weight. Victoria enlisted an eclectic mix of interviewees for the documentary, including Nigel Lawson, Anne Diamond, Rosemary Conley and Johnny Vegas. Although she gave the UK marketing manager of SlimFast a thorough grilling (perhaps to avenge all the years she had glugged the drinks), Victoria was sympathetic in an interview with Sarah Ferguson, overlooking the fact that the former Royal was a highly paid ambassador for Weight Watchers.

  In the second of the two documentaries Victoria travelled to LA in the hope of finding a more radical and forward-thinking approach to the weight issue. In a scene reminiscent of an early Wood & Walters sketch she went in pursuit of a 34-inch waist pair of trousers from an upmarket boutique. She also took part in a workout with camp aerobics guru Richard Simmons, interviewed a Hollywood casting director, interviewed the singer Carnie Wilson about her gastric bypass and celebrated with a group of over-sized belly dancers.

  Far from being cynical about her visit, Victoria reported that her preconceptions about American ‘happy fatties’ were blown out of the water. ‘They’re not happy because they’re fat; they’re fat because their lives have damaged them and they have taken a decision not to waste any more energy in changing their bodies but put it into enjoying themselves … that’s what I would like to pass on, all that energy, all that confidence, that affirmation that we are okay, we do deserve to be here.’

  She summed up with the advice: ‘If life gives you a belly – go dancing!’

  Victoria said she did not write Acorn Antiques: The Musical! with the intention of having Julie, Celia Imrie and Duncan Preston in the cast. She said it did not occur to her that they would want to be in it and that she assumed she would have to recruit people from musical theatre.

  Walters tended to turn down West End offers because they took her away from her family. She was offered the chance to reprise her Oscar-nominated role of the dance instructor for the stage musical version of Billy Elliot but rejected it so she could don Mrs Overall’s pinny once more. There were conditions though. She insisted on a maximum of six shows a week. Victoria, who originally had no intention of appearing in the show (‘It’s not really what drives me, being on stage with a wig on’) solved the problem by offering to play Mrs Overall on Monday nights and Wednesday matinees.

  Once Walters registered her interest, Imrie and Preston quickly signed up. The three confirmed their commitment after a two-week workshop of the musical in the February of 2004, but the only problem was finding a time when both Walters and Sir Trevor Nunn would be available.

  Victoria spent the spring and summer doing rewrites of the show, taking on board what had been learned from the workshops. She somehow found time to film a cameo as Queen Mary II for the film The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse. Jokily comparing her screen time to Dame Judi Dench’s in Shakespeare In Love, Victoria reasoned that she too could be up for an Oscar.

  Up until November Acorn Antiques: The Musical! was still without a West End venue so there was much relief when word came through that the Theatre Royal Haymarket would be available. Acorn Antiques was open for business. And what a lucrative business it would turn out to be. The £2 million show broke the record for the most expensive West End theatre tickets, but in doing so attracted negative publicity.

  Group Line, Britain’s largest independent supplier to bulk purchasers, and Lashmars, a founder member of the Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers, both refused to sell the tickets on the grounds that bulk-buying was too much of a financial risk. Agents claimed they were told they would be charged a £4.75 booking fee on every transaction if they did not buy tickets in advance.

  Group Line managing director Simon Warwick complained that making ticket agents buy in bulk at high prices meant they took all the financial risks.

  He said: ‘It isn’t so much the price – it’s the concept of the partnership between producers and agents starting to break down, when they ask you to take the risk. An insurance broker doesn’t underwrite the business. The insurance company does that. If we are buying the tickets, we are taking the risks. If Phil McIntyre thinks he can get that price, then good for him. But I think it is expensive.’

  Warwick added: ‘We’ve had very few requests for the show and, when we have, people have said “you must be joking” and walked away from it.’

  Carol Lashmar said: ‘We’ve been asked to pay an additional booking fee. That means that either we don’t make any money on the tickets or, if we add our own booking fee, the ticket price becomes ludicrous for our customers.’

  Defending the decision, Phil McIntyre spokesman Paul Roberts pointed out that the high ticket price was due to the fact that the 888-seat theatre was significantly smaller than many other West End venues.

  He said: ‘I think you have to look at the whole ticket range. Everything has been done to make it as accessible as possible. The cheapest price is in line with the rest of the West End. I think Victoria Wood and Trevor Nunn would have liked the ticket prices to be lower. I would have liked them to be higher but it’s all about compromise.’

  When asked her views about the frustrations of an audience that might want to see both herself and Julie in the show, Victoria simply suggested they could buy tickets to see both versions of Mrs Overall.

  Mindful of accusations that she could be deemed to be exploiting the goodwill of original ‘Acorn Antiques’ fans, Victoria stressed that the show would be so much more than a longer version of the television episodes and bridled at suggestions that it was a ‘revival’.

  ‘It’s a completely different idea because Acorn Antiques was a series of sketches and this is a full-length show,’ she said. ‘You can’t just rely on audiences knowing the original; you’ve got to engage them all over again.’

  She added: ‘It’s useful to have such well-established material, but that guarantees nothing. I see a lot of musicals and some of them are real shockers. I know people’s expectations are high; we’ve done everything in our power not to disappoint them.’

  Sir Trevor Nunn, who had won praise for directing recent revivals of Oklahoma!, South Pacific and Anything Goes, attempted to give gravitas and legitimacy to the enterprise and stated: ‘Satirising the second-rate has always gone down well with British audiences. Victoria is a clever satirist – she understands the awfulness that’s at the heart of a lot of modern culture, and she knows how to make it funny. The concomitant of that is that she’s also aware, in a melancholy way, of change. A lot of Acorn Antiques is about missing the old days, a nostalgic delight in the awfulness of those times. It’s about fear of progress.’

  Five years after the original idea for the musical, the cast and production team got together for the first time in the December of 2004 to begin rehearsals. The show, with a 20-strong cast playing 46 characters, was Victoria’s most ambitious project yet. The three-hour-long musical was to preview from 31 January (almost 20 years to the day that the first episode aired on As Seen On TV) and then run from 9 February until 21 May. Despite the controversy over ticket prices, advance sales were good.

  Victoria was on such a high that, on the advice of her therapist, she temporarily stopped her sessions and instead allowed herself to enjoy the experience of working with friends and colleagues. And having learned from the mistakes of her past she allowed herself time off during the 10 day Christmas break and indulged herself by watching episode after episode of her beloved Frasier.

  One of the reasons Victoria’s career endured was because of her resolute refusal to latch on to fashionable comedy trends. ‘I don’t know much about comedy, it doesn’t interest me that much, I just like doing it,’ she said. ‘I care very much about what I do and I don�
�t really care what other people do.’

  The results of such single-mindedness buoyed her self-belief and despite – or because of – her indifference to the fashions and fads of British comedy over the decades, she remained firmly rooted in the public consciousness. In the first few years of the new millennium As Seen On TV was voted the best sketch show ever by Radio Times readers. The same publication also named her the best stand-up comedian of the last 50 years and the funniest woman on TV. And she and Julie Walters were awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award at the British Comedy Awards 2005.

  Such popularity was obviously appreciated by Victoria but it was no longer something the she actively strived for out of a desperate need for validation. She was philosophical when she was beaten by Billy Connolly in a MORI poll to find out Britain’s favourite living comedian and was equally untroubled when she was placed 27th in a Channel 4 poll of more than 300 comedians, writers and producers to find ‘The Comedians’ Comedian’.

  But she was genuinely moved when BAFTA honoured her with a tribute in February 2005. Friends and colleagues were out in force to celebrate her achievements with presenters Richard E. Grant and Julie Walters describing her as ‘a living legend’ and ‘massively generous’. In addition to clips charting her career there were filmed tributes from Richard Curtis, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Michael Parkinson and Eric Sykes.

  Ted Robbins, one of the contributors, (and the warm-up man from her Wood & Walters days at Granada) described Victoria as a ‘shy show-off’ and this held true because Victoria was too shy and embarrassed to watch her tribute out front. Perhaps this was a hangover from having a mother who believed it was wrong to give praise. Instead, she watched it on a monitor backstage with only her make-up artist for company. When she did appear on stage to acknowledge the standing ovation and accept her award from Julie Walters in character as Mrs Overall, Victoria wittily avoided sentimentality by explaining: ‘I did start watching it and then I couldn’t watch it because somebody said that UK Gold were doing a back-to-back bumper Bargain Hunt.’