Victoria Wood

Victoria Wood was so good that I went to see her twice. She made brilliant jokes - word play, observation, supposition - just brilliantly observed. The first time we went to see her was in an enormous shed somewhere in the West country - she called it a Carpet Warehouse - bang on. I laughed so much that evening. The second time we went to see her was at the Royal Albert Hall. She was very good in places, for example - her aerobic teachers were always brilliantly observed - but some of her monologues about being a woman were just bleak and bitter - I felt that she had reached a sour period in her life.

I loved "Dinnerladies" - the cast seemed to jell very well - it was warm and cosy and Victoria Wood, as Bren, had never looked so pretty and happy. She seemed to have no idea that her shape was not a problem - if you compare her to Sarah Millican - who seems to be comfortable with her shape and find it normal, which it is - Victoria Wood wore enormous coats as though her shape was too terrible to be known. What a paradox: she lampooned the diet cycle but internalised its values anyway.

Some years ago she was on Desert Island Discs and revealed more about herself. She and her siblings were brought up in a house far from anywhere by a mother who was too depressed to be functional. Victoria described the mother coming home with lots of plaster board and dividing the house so all the family could have separate rooms. There were no family meals. Nobody had their friends around. The place was a mess. Victoria realised, looking back, that the reason she had been such an oddball at school was because she had been neglected. She had not had the care that other children had. She was always outside, observing, and reading. She loved reading.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008kkcg

Even when she went to university (she did Drama at Birmingham, before my time), she felt too intimidated by the other students to be part of the mainstream group and do well, and left with a low class of degree (a third?)

I feel sad for that little girl, but enormous admiration for her. Melvyn Bragg said: "She projected herself out of loneliness" - mainly on stage. She taught herself to write in such a way that people laughed. She used her amazing talent for mimicry. She made fun of the sort of people who find life fairly easy. She used her talent for seeing the ridiculous in the way things are marketed - the sacred cows that are put up for women to worship - our domestic shibboleths. She laughed at the strange names of cosmetics, side-by-side with cleaning products, the things people won't say in so many words, women and their fakery and their weird prejudices that they make so much of: the way they construct personality. She was analytically brilliant. I wish I could write a proper appreciation of her - I think it would make a very good, serious study.