Victoria Wood has been gone for ten years and I miss her each dsy | UK | News | EUROtoday

I used to be fortunate sufficient to depend Victoria Wood as a good friend. During quite a few conferences over greater than 20 years, we established a
terrific rapport. Victoria was a pleasant, life-enhancing presence. I at all times got here away from seeing her with an interior glow of pleasure – and an irrepressible, foolish grin on my face.

The tone was set at our very first encounter in 1994. From the second we sat down to speak on the West London set of her marvellous movie about ill-matched sisters, Pat and Margaret, I immediately fell for Victoria’s mega-watt charisma.

She was in super type that day, mocking her character Margaret’s tight curly perm.

“No naked flames near it, please. All the budget went on it.”

The comic went on to recall a earlier day filming at Heston Services, the place Margaret labored cooking fry-ups.

“We were ambushed by 45 women on their way to Ladies’ Day at Ascot. They were all pointing at us as though we were rare llamas in a zoo.

“On another occasion, bystanders started videoing us. ‘Ooo, it’s that woman off telly.’ ‘Who do you mean?’ ‘You know.’ ‘We’ll ask Doreen.’ ‘No, she’s in toilet’.”

As I sat there, laughing uncontrollably at her spontaneous brilliance, a long-lasting friendship was born.

So it’s with explicit sorrow that I bear in mind the loss of life of my good friend 10 years in the past this yr. It was a second of intense nationwide bereavement.

Victoria’s long-time good friend and collaborator Dame Julie Walters encapsulated the nationwide temper when she launched an announcement saying: “I’m too heart-sore to comment. The loss of her is incalculable.”

I used to be very lucky to go to Victoria’s memorial service at St James’s Piccadilly in London on July 4, 2016 – the one journalist to take action. Attended by greater than 400 folks, together with associates of Victoria’s equivalent to Celia Imrie, Steve Coogan, Emilia Fox, David Threlfall, Vic Reeves, Dame Maureen Lipman, Maxine Peake and Joan Armatrading, it was a deeply transferring event.

The incomparable Julie carried out a few of Victoria’s memorable sketches and Michael Ball sang a few of her timeless songs.

As an 11-piece band from the Royal Academy of Music Brass closed the service with a medley of Victoria’s favorite tunes, there was not a dry eye within the church.

It was a day of profound disappointment, celebrating somebody who introduced us profound happiness.

And I’m not alone in nonetheless feeling an amazing sense of loss at Victoria’s passing.

On the tenth anniversary of her loss of life from most cancers on the age of simply 62, tens of millions up and down the nation shall be mourning the departure of one in all our best ever comedians.

To mark the milestone, her fantastic life story is being recounted in a feature-length documentary, Becoming Victoria Wood, launched in cinemas on Friday and on U&Gold in February.

She may even be commemorated with the opening of the brand new Victoria Wood Theatre at Bowness-On-Windermere within the Lake District this month.

In May the venue will host the world premiere of Fourteen Again, a musical primarily based on her songs.

So why is Victoria nonetheless so broadly missed? And what drew – and continues to attract – untold legions of followers (often called “The Woodettes”) to this comedian genius?

For a begin, no different performer stood out in so many various fields. Victoria excelled in all the pieces from stand-up (she bought out the Royal Albert Hall for a record-breaking 15 nights – twice!), sketch reveals (Victoria Wood: As Seen On TV), and sitcoms (Dinnerladies) to comedy songs (The Ballad of Barry & Freda (Let’s Do It)), humorous movies (Pat And Margaret), dramatic movies (Housewife, 49) and musicals (Acorn Antiques: The Musical!)

She gained 4 Bafta awards alongside the best way. Truly, she was one in all a form. As Julie places it: “She was the only one of her that there was. You could not compare Vic to anybody else.”

Catherine Abbott, the director of Becoming Victoria Wood, agrees. “She was unique. Early on in her career, it was difficult for her because nobody knew what to do with her.

“They wanted to put her in a box, but there wasn’t one shape that fitted her. So she had to make her own box.”

Victoria was additionally universally beloved as a result of she struck a chord with audiences. She portrayed the form of unusual folks not usually depicted on TV. Audiences related with Victoria as a result of even when she was wealthy and well-known, she remained “one of us”.

As she noticed it: “My only perception is that we’re all in it together and some of us are actually going on telly and talking about it.”

The key to her comedy was relatability.

Victoria, who blossomed as soon as she found comedy after a reclusive and lonely childhood in Bury, was capable of establish along with her viewers in a method few performers can. Always able to find the extraordinary within the unusual, she by no means patronised her followers.

They had been thrilled to see themselves mirrored within the lady up on stage. In quick, she “got” us.

“Even though she had become very famous, she continued to be the ordinary person that she was right at the beginning,” says Geoff Posner, the producer and director of Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV and Dinnerladies.

Catherine nods her head. “The audience would feel that they’d seen themselves, or that they’d seen somebody who got them and had expressed something about their lives that nobody else had.

“That is partly because Victoria kept exploring day-to-day life and the kind of people and stories that aren’t always celebrated front and centre.

“She was able to see the magic in all of that.

“In her hands, everybody was interesting and everybody could be funny.”

Another notable high quality in Victoria’s comedy was her eagerness to champion the underdog.

The mother-of-two as soon as mentioned, “I’m aware of people who don’t have chances in life, who are stuck in a situation.

“I understand what it’s like to feel that you aren’t important and that people don’t find you interesting, because that’s how I felt as a teenager. Those are things I always want to put into my work.”

Victoria’s use of language and exact employment of name names had been at all times spot on.

Remember that immortal line from The Ballad of Barry & Freda – “Beat me on the bottom with a Woman’s Weekly.”

On one event, Victoria defined to me how she got here up with such unfailingly correct dialogue. “I pay little people to come round to my house and tell me about their lives,” she joked. “I talk like that myself, and I keep my ears open.

“I want my characters to sound realistic and not talk in ‘jokey dialogue’.

“I’m a lower middle-class person. I haven’t altered my attitude – I’ve just added a few cars and houses. Alan Bennett has lived in Regents Park for 30 years, and he can still do it.” Audiences had been additionally interested in that basically British attribute: self-deprecation. “It’s a British thing, I was born with it,” Victoria as soon as advised me.

“I couldn’t go on stage and tell them how marvellous I am. It’s much more like, ‘I had come here to entertain you, but I can see you’re busy, so I won’t detain you for any longer than is necessary’.”

In the male-dominated realm of comedy within the early Nineteen Eighties, Victoria was ground-breaking in the best way she considered the world by means of a feminine lens. She broke down obstacles beforehand thought insurmountable.

In one in all myriad quotable one-liners, Victoria as soon as requested: “You know that building in London where all the windows blew out? That wasn’t a bomb, it was 56 premenstrual women the day the chocolate machine broke down!”

Geoff recollects that when Victoria Wood: As Seen On TV started in 1985, folks mentioned, “‘We can’t have a half-hour programme hosted by and written by a woman, especially one from the North, especially not one who talks about personal things’.”

Victoria even made a joke of Southerners’ disdain for the North.

In one sketch, the luxury continuity announcer performed by Susie Blake in Victoria Wood: As Seen On TV, says: “We’d like to apologise to viewers in the North. It must be awful for them.”

But Victoria was by no means going to be held again by what males thought. “All kinds of things she talked about had never been mentioned on TV from a woman’s point of view before,” says Geoff.

“Victoria lifted up the stone and examined what’s underneath. In part of her stand-up show, she talked about how you develop piles when you have a baby. It’s something that everybody knows happens, but nobody talked about.”

Victoria was a pioneer for different feminine comedians. “She gave us permission,” says Dawn French, one other excellent comedian. “She was a trailblazer.”

Maxine, Victoria’s co-star in Dinnerladies, believes it was very vital that, for instance, The Ballad of Barry & Freda was advised from the perspective of a girl with a intercourse drive.

“It was so important because so many women were shamed into not talking about these things,” she says. “Sometimes you’d laugh till you cried because it was about the female experience.

“People did feel seen by her. I’d say it was therapy wrapped up in laughter.”

In assessing her life, Victoria as soon as mirrored: “All I ever wanted to do was be funny. That was my ambition. I can’t really imagine a better job – that you would write something and it would make people laugh.” She achieved that – and gave the world untold comedy gold within the course of.

All of which made Victoria’s loss of life a decade in the past a lot extra heartbreaking.

Michael, who starred in her splendid 2014 musical movie, That Day We Sang, recollects: “When she passed, it was a genuine moment where everyone was devastated. That’s when you understood the impact that she had on so many people’s lives.”

Catherine provides: “I remember very much the outpouring of grief and the collective national shock when she passed. It felt like a huge loss at the time, and I don’t think that’s particularly diminished in the years since.

“She remains so loved. There’s a void there. There are lots of brilliant comedians around, but because Victoria was so unique and so much herself, there’s not really anyone else who’s doing it in quite the same way.”

Maxine concurs. “She is still lauded as the best comedian – not comedienne – we’ve ever had.”

But it’s Victoria who summed up her enduring recognition greatest. “People used to really struggle to try and describe me. But now they describe other people by saying, ‘It’s like Victoria Wood’.”

A pause. “So I think I’ve got away with it.”

● Becoming Victoria Wood is launched in cinemas on Friday and on U&Gold in February