I first came across Victoria Wood in 1974 on the TV talent show New Faces, where she got her break. I happened to catch it and I was immediately struck by her. I thought, God she’s original, she’s fun, what a really talented, bold young woman doing the kind of act that was supposed to be dead and buried 30 years ago with Joyce Grenfell – but she’s doing it in her own way.
I bumped into her a few times after that, and then got to know her properly when we made two South Bank Shows together, in 1996 and 2007. We liked each other, had a lot in common, and got on well whenever we met, which was a good few times.
In person, she was quieter than on the screen. She did say in one of our interviews that the real Victoria Wood was on stage, and she was very emphatic about that – it wasn’t said in a throwaway manner. I found her thoughtful, quiet, slightly detached and she wasn’t given to long answers, or certainly not to me.
This had a lot to do with the self-imposed solitude of her childhood at home. At school she seemed to be jolly and had friends, to have been quite a rascal, locking people up in cupboards and so on. And yet she had this very powerful secret life at home: when her parents were out, she would play the piano and collect the applause from the empty room and bow.
Her father was a musician and she went with him to concerts and developed a passion for fish and chips, which never left her. This seemed to be the only meal she thought worth eating, as far as I could tell. I remember going with her to get fish and chips when we were shooting The South Bank Show in Blackpool.
Whenever I’d see her doing a show, I’d pop to the dressing room afterwards to say hello. Once I took my daughter Alice, who was nine or 10 at the time and a passionate fan. Victoria was quite firm. “Oh you’ve seen all my shows, which one did you like the best?” Alice told her and Victoria did light up: “Good, that’s my favourite as well.” Alice had passed the test.
She accomplished so much. She was one of Britain’s first female standups and did a record run of sellout nights at the Royal Albert Hall. I went to one. It was extraordinary, packed with people roaring their heads off with laughter. She got the northern working class absolutely worked out. It wasn’t just mocking, it was appraising, it was teasing, it was done with such affection. They wouldn’t have liked it so much if they felt they were being sent up. But they couldn’t get enough of it, because there was so much in her act that was accurate. The audience would roar because they’d recognise someone that they knew on the street.
I don’t know whether she was lonely or not, that’s none of my business, but she would emphasise that doing the one-woman show on the road all the time wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs. She loved going to the stage door at the end and meeting all the people for autographs. She really liked her audience. But in between there’d be lots of driving around and sitting in hotel rooms waiting to go on, which couldn’t have been much fun.
She was absolutely determined to be the best at what she did, or at least as good as she could be, and it turned out she swept the board at it – there was no one as good as her for years. For a lot of the younger female comedians, she’s their pastor, they tread in her footprints still. And she garnered enormous affection as well as respect. There was nothing nasty about her.
I felt a great loss when she died, a keen loss. It was totally out of the blue. We talked a couple of times recently about doing something together. She came over to the house a few years ago to talk about doing a documentary, and shortly before she died I wrote to her about some other project. She wrote back saying thanks for that, I’m a bit under the weather at the moment, but I’ll get in touch. That was the last I heard from her.
She was a terrific talent. I think she’ll be remembered with a great smile of affection and people saying, so-and-so is pretty good but not as good as Victoria Wood.
