The Guardian view on Victoria Wood: funny, northern, female, ours

Victoria Wood: her funniest moments - video

National treasure is an overused term. But the prime minister was right to use it about Victoria Wood, because it’s exactly what she was. Wood combined Alan Bennett’s ear for dialogue, Noël Coward’s songwriting skills, Ronnie Barker’s comic acting talent and Ken Dodd’s command of gag-cracking. She had the loveability of a Gracie Fields or an Eric Morecambe and at her best she could channel some of the same humanist poignancy as a Chaplin or a Chekhov. Let’s be clear, though, what kind of national treasure Wood actually was. She died in London on Wednesday, but Wood was a northern, English, working-class, Lancastrian and Mancunian female treasure. She was the authentic voice of an optimistic, decent, unpretentious, take-people-as-they-come, mucking-in sort of Britishness that is almost always ignored when the posh and the populist try to define this country’s virtues, but which still binds people together every bit as strongly as any monarch.