"Beat me on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly": All things Victoria Wood

[Mel O'Drama]

Victoria Wood: As Seen On TV





Series Two and Special

(November 1986-December 1987)

​

The second series continued to be a joy. For me it’s a no-brainer that As Seen On TV is the Fawlty Towers of sketch shows. Impeccably written, wonderfully cast and truly timeless.

As with Fawlty Towers, it feels very much like lightning in a bottle. For all the hard work and creativity put into creating it, there’s something so special that it’s difficult to believe it could be planned. Somewhere along the way it became its own beast and the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. It was no doubt what Vic and the gang would have hoped for, but it was in no way guaranteed. And it’s probable that nobody involved in creating it could have foreseen quite how much the audience would connect with it. While everyone involved has moved on to new material, the legacy left behind has become immortalised. Not just through repeats, home media and even theatre spin-offs, but in the most profound way possible by becoming part of our psyches and language. It’s become a frame of reference for many. There’s many an everyday scenario or event that brings to mind a line or scene from the series. And the frame of reference is broad: from daytime telly to bad service to sex or death. Many themes of which are what also makes Fawlty Towers still resonate after more than four decades. Explore the origins of Fawlty Towers and the inspiration for Vic's iconic Two Soups sketch which rounded off the second series, and both have their roots in a specific experience of shockingly poor service had by their respective creators.


Two Soups remains hilariously funny. It can't be anything else to anyone who's ever had a bad dining experience. Julie Walters is so wonderful as the waitress. Her walk is just hilarious. I love that we could see her white, smiling dentures from the other side of the room.

​

Even funnier than her walking towards the couple was when she turned and walked away. I felt almost cruel laughing, so wonderfully observed is it.

For me it stirs up memories of inexplicably ending up in Bognor Regis one evening while on a trip to the South Downs and, hungry with limited options, ending up consuming steamed fish in a seafront hotel restaurant, surrounded by coachloads of people who made me feel very youthful (the greying, almost liquid, wibbly wobbly white mass on my plate filled me with a fear of what I might have to look forward to in later years).

To draw the Fawlty parallels to their logical conclusion, As Seen On TV’s strength also lies in its brevity. There are only twelve regular episodes, but their impact was huge.

In the final episode, Vic’s opening spiel was about this being her farewell to TV. It was done in a lighthearted way, but it would be another two years before she would write something specifically for TV, and eleven years before there’d be a Vic series that gave us a series featuring a group of characters that we saw on a regular basis. I suspect her decision to draw a line in the sand was made easier by how exhausting it would be for one person to come up with so much creative material on a regular basis. All the same, there’s an element of risk involved in leaving the security of an established and popular regular slot without any certainty of what’s to come.

I also appreciate the sense of closure that came from choices such as “killing off” characters on Acorn Antiques or sacking the continuity announcer. Partly it’s comforting to feel that we won’t be missing out in not returning. But it also feels satisfyingly as though Vic had made her decision to be a lasting one and she wasn’t going to leave herself the safety net of possibly returning in the same format a few years down the line. It’s her creative piece, and we got to see her finish and sign her work.

 

[Barbara Fan]

It was no coincidence that when Victoria Wood died, the news had TV 2 soups and barry and Freda as an epitaph of her best work

I laugh everytime i see 2 soups and i know whats coming but it still raises a laugh and the JW punchline when they didnt leave a tip.

I dont know how Julie W and Duncan P kept a straight face when filming

 

[Mel O'Drama]

It was no coincidence that when Victoria Wood died, the news had TV 2 soups and barry and Freda as an epitaph of her best work

Yes, they're two of her most iconic. And again it's a credit to Victoria's generous and sharing nature that she didn't even appear in Two Soups which was the grand finale to the series. She just selected the perfect people to make it work.

I laugh everytime i see 2 soups and i know whats coming but it still raises a laugh and the JW punchline when they didnt leave a tip.

It's hilarious. And it seems to get funnier every time I watch. It really holds up to repeated views.

I dont know how Julie W and Duncan P kept a straight face when filming

Julie said that she could see Celia and Duncan "twitching with suppressed laughter" while they filmed it, and apparently the studio audience laughed so hard and so long they thought they were going to have to stop filming. It's to their credit that it's not really noticeable when watching. I think it worked out well that the audience got to laugh while Julie took five minutes to walk across the room so it was out of their system by the time they had dialogue.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

An Audience With… Victoria Wood



(10th December 1988)

​

A plethora of famous, almost-famous, not-quite-famous and never-famous-but-they-tried “celebs” make up the audience, carefully lit in order for us to see their best self conscious fake laughing at the Oscars faces, which range from the grudging “oh, she’s so clever” slow head shake accompanied by half smile and clap (Jennifer Saunders, Ade Edmonson and Dawn French) to the narcissistic “aren’t I adorable when I’m amused” nose wrinkle (a pair of blonde women in the front row).

A big part of the fun of these Audience With sets is the nostalgia of spotting “celebs” you’d long forgotten. To that end, there’s Richard O’Sullivan’s daughter from Me & My Girl and her sassy black friend; agony aunts Claire Rayner and Miriam Stoppard (the former chuckling happily away while the latter licks her lips in an effort not to grin to the point her face cracks). There’s a grubby looking dark haired woman in a black outfit with puffy black sleeves who apparently knew someone at LWT as she was in the front row and kept getting close ups biting down on a finger side on in her mouth (I think she’s Anton Rodgers’s bit from May To December, but couldn’t swear to it).


Then there’s the usual celebrity crowd of the time: Joan Sims; Maureen Lipman; Joan Bakewell; Pat Coombs; Bella Emberg; Liza Goddard; Denis Norden; David “Kid” Jensen; the smooth one with the moustache from Crossroads; Corrie’s Kevin Webster; even Michael Grade and Judi Dench are there.

And of course there are Vic’s friends: Julie Walters (“Star of Educating Rita. Typhoo One Cup”) and Celia Imrie (“Looking for panto this year, Celia?”).

It’s no doubt an intimidating situation for one person to hold the spotlight for fifty minutes but Vic looks anything but and makes it look effortless. She takes hold off the situation by treating it with a degree of contempt:

We’ve not done badly tonight. Who have we got? Some friends of Wincey Willis and some people from Guildford… We’ve got some Right Honourables, at least one Dame and a couple of old queens. They’re round the back getting the paint off my pac a mac.

She even pokes fun at the business where various celebs ask prepared-ahead-of-time questions “That’s not one of my questions”, she responds to one.

The patter is perfect. Some of the material will be very familiar to anyone who’s seen her live shows, and even her TV shows to this point (the sex on the train story and the denting the viaduct business, among others, were both used in the As Seen On TV opening monologues). But that’s the point. This is a time capsule version of her show, and so there absolutely must be some familiar material. It’s like a music concert: there has to be a mix of old favourites and new material so that everyone gets what they want. Vic is a top raconteur, and no matter how many times some of these anecdotes are told, what impresses is how she makes it sound fresh and spontaneous each time. If you just watch one live performance it all sounds off-the-cuff. But keep watching and the great skill and incredibly hard work behind each line starts to become apparent.

It’s clear how Vic’s confidence has grown by this time. The Wood & Walters pilot had four songs crammed into twenty five minutes. Here, in a set that’s double that length, Vic performs just two. The rest is dialogue. There’s no hiding and we get to see her in full flight.

Most impressive is the middle act, in which Vic tells one long story which begins with her food shopping and segues to her being pursued, hiding in a department store and ends in a theatre with her watching farce. Along the way comes the legendary “World Of Sacharelle” piece and a song, It Would Never Have Worked. And it ends with a punchline that’s set up in the beginning with her being mistaken from the fat neighbour from Fresh Fields or Dawn French. It’s a breathtakingly artful twenty minutes.

The final act is memorably classic, kicking off with “I’m lookin’ for me friend. Kimberleh” to the “little survey” and ending with perhaps her finest rendition of The Ballad Of Barry and Freda.

(continued)​

 

[Mel O'Drama]

An Audience With… Victoria Wood


(continued)​

The disc’s bonus material is interesting. Three of the four interviews are from 1985 - three years before Audience. The fourth is from 1990. Having watched chronologically up until this point, it’s a little startling to watch these out of sync and see the change in Vic in these five years. In that time she’s lost weight, had a makeover, become a mother, performed sellout tours and had a hit TV series. And the Vic we meet in 1990 is far more confident and relaxed.

A couple of the interviews look very much like the kind of material she satirised regularly. The stiff interviews, the cheerful daytime presenter and the slightly highbrow aspect.

The Glass Box in particular seemed almost too earnest to be for real. It’s not a series I remember and in this context even the opening credits made me laugh. It’s interesting that Vic - even at this early stage of her career - was considered significant enough to warrant an overview in this way.

I couldn’t help noticing that the two male interviewers - Clive James and Michael Aspel - both made attempts to “keep up” with Vic by being funny to a degree, whereas the two women didn’t. That reminded me of a comment she made to that effect in a much later interview (I think it was Dawn French’s Funny Women episode on Vic).

Whereas Aspel came across like he was trying too hard, the Clive James interview had quite a fun chemistry and was genuinely funny, covering a lot of ground.

Do you have a secret desire to be Jerry Hall?

She’s too tall. She’d keep banging her head on the ceiling.

She’s boney isn’t she, really?

I’ve never rubbed up against her, so…

Some people say that’s the reason why Mick Jagger’s lips look so bruised. We’ll have to take that out later.

The Clive James segment led me to seek out the rest of the programme on YouTube. Peter Cook appeared alongside Vic and said something which will make @Barbara Fan get her shotgun out. But I'll post about that in the Dallas forum.
[/QUOTE]

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Victoria Wood



(November 1989)

​

It’s many years since I’ve watched these and I started the first one with a degree of reservation having read that she series was poorly received and Vic herself later said it wasn’t as well written as it could have been.

Turns out I’m really enjoying them. From the moment I saw Vic’s silver Vauxhall Nova, the series just clicked with me.

After the sketches and stand up, I’m feeling ready for more story, and the setup of this series hits the spot. The location work is very welcome, and these episodes feel like little mini films. Each episode is one unique story that follows an arc. And the next episode has a completely new premise with all new characters (often played by actors who’ve played different characters in other episodes, in common with Vic’s sketch shows and films).

For example, Enid - Anne Reid’s character is forthright and cutting in Mens Sana In Thingummy Doodah - while she plays the more timid and reserved Sheila in The Library.

Perhaps the most stark contrast were Julie Walters’ characters. In Mens Sana, she’s the gently spoken, vacuous Nicola whose attempts to posh up and sound clinical are very reminiscent of Vic’s beautician from The World Of Sacharelle:

I’m Nicola, as I say. If you should need me at all during the periodical which you’re with us, just examine a member of staff who’s approximate, say “Where’s Nicola” and that will find me… I’ve only recently taken over as head of Pinkneys but don’t despair. I do have a full and variable business career behind of me, including hands on salon experience galore. Plus two years of prosthetic nail work. I’m Nicola, as I say, and this here, standing alongside of myself is Judy… As well as myself and Judy, we do have a highly professional team of… of… professionals who will be intending to your needs, should they arise.

Then in Over To Pam, Julie was the title character whose sympathetic, caring image was at odds with the monstrous, tyrannical diva offscreen. Victoria refuses to concede her place in the dining queue to the entitled Pam. After “don’t you know who I am?” fails, Pam claims she has diabetes and needs pastry, which leads to a moment that’s ingrained in my head from previous watches (I’d thought it was an As Seen On TV sketch) in which Vic, verbally cutting Pam down to size, stops speaking long enough to lick the last two croissants to ensure Pam doesn’t have them.

Vic herself who is more or less the same character in each episode: a version of herself. She’s called Victoria, and works in television comedy. She speaks, acts and dresses consistently and even drives the same car. Each of these three episodes her playing a good Samaritan, supporting a friend who is in a situation they find intimidating (going to a fat farm, meeting men through video dating and appearing on TV) even though her schemes to help frequently go wrong.

Her regular troupe of actors is mostly present and correct. During As Seen On TV, I was struggling to place where I recognised Meg Johnson from. Now that I’ve watched her final appearance, I’ve finally realised she was Eunice on Corrie.

Another familiar Corrie face appeared in The Library, which featured the rather bizarre sight of Dennis Tanner boring Valerie Barlow silly while on a date in a tearoom.

Other new arrivals have been Liza Tarbuck as the world’s most slovenly housekeeper in Mens Sana In Thingummy Doodah, who seemed very much a proto Twinkle from dinnerladies.

Three episodes down, I’m halfway through this series. There’s so much I’d forgotten and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what the second half of the series brings.

 

[Barbara Fan]

Mens Sana In Thingummy Doodah

is my favoutire epiosde out of that series - I think that Liza Tarbuck got all the great lines in that epiosde - from singing Chirpy Chirpy cheep cheep, "so long as he puts them back in the right place" to the car rocking on its sides with Allardyce (was that his name?!)

"im Nicola" I think she told us frequently - it was nice to see Julie playing someone not 30 years older!! and nice to see Selina Cadell (sister of Hi de Hi Simon) as the serious fitness instructor

Meg Johnson - think she ended up Mrs Fred Gee in Corrie for a while and Dennis Tanner aka Philip Lowrie also appears in a Lot of V W shows, he must have been a fav (and I was always sorry that he was written out of Corrie)

I used to have those heated rollers @Mel O'Drama - many a split end as a result!!

I am going to dig out my Auduence with Vic Wood and rewatch if only to see who the

grubby looking dark haired woman in a black outfit with puffy black sleeves

is!!!

keep em' coming!!

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Mens Sana In Thingummy Doodah

is my favoutire epiosde out of that series

It's a great one. I've enjoyed them all in different ways, but I think Mens Sana... feels quite like a warm up for dinnerladies because of the banter between the women.

I think that Liza Tarbuck got all the great lines in that epiosde - from singing Chirpy Chirpy cheep cheep, "so long as he puts them back in the right place" to the car rocking on its sides with Allardyce (was that his name?!)

Ha ha. Yes, I think it was.

I loved the Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep thing too. I liked the way one of her "things" was to sing a snippet of a different song each time she made her exit. She did All Kinds Of Everything and When I Need You among others. I was really surprised that she sang a bit of Yesterday Once More, as I thought Richard Carpenter wouldn't have allowed it. Maybe it was short enough that they didn't need permission.

"im Nicola" I think she told us frequently - it was nice to see Julie playing someone not 30 years older!!

I loved that character. She reminds me very much of a friend of my parents. Not so much the ditziness, but just how she looked and the gentle way she spoke.

and nice to see Selina Cadell (sister of Hi de Hi Simon) as the serious fitness instructor

Aha. I saw the surname and thought of Simon. Then I forgot to Google to see if she was related, so thanks for confirming.

Meg Johnson - think she ended up Mrs Fred Gee in Corrie for a while

Yes. She was in a few episodes of As Seen On TV (my favourite being the cafe owner in the first documentary with Jim Broadbent). I commented how good she was at the time, but hadn't made the association. As she appeared in more episodes it was really annoying me trying to place how I recognised her. It only came to me last night when I looked her up on IMDb. Apparently she's been in Emmerdale recently as well.

I remember her fondly as Eunice Gee, who I seem to recall being quite pushy and giving poor Fred a hard time about bettering himself. But she had (and still has) a lovely warm smile which is how she can get away with being a bit snarky sometimes.

She was great as the TV station receptionist in Over To Pam, making inappropriate comments to everyone with a smile on her face and trying to be all buddy buddy with the celebs. There was a nice running gag with her colleague who she keeps asking "Have you lost weight?". The colleague had already commented that it was because a close relative had died, and the receptionist just smiled and congratulated her as if it was great news.

Dennis Tanner aka Philip Lowrie also appears in a Lot of V W shows, he must have been a fav

I'm looking forward to seeing more of him. Wasn't he also the camp one in spoof soap The Mall?

I too enjoyed him in Sixties Corrie.

I used to have those heated rollers @Mel O'Drama - many a split end as a result!!

Oh dear. And all in the name of keeping up with Pam Ewing.

I am going to dig out my Auduence with Vic Wood and rewatch if only to see who the
is!!!

Oh, enjoy. It's a good night out (well, sort of out anyway). Gosh - I hope she's not someone you admire after my comments.

 

[Alexis Colby Carrington]

Over to Pam is by far my favourite episode in this series. Julie Walters plays Pam perfectly, Victoria Wood and the rest of the cast are also excellent.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Victoria Wood


(December 1989)

​

The casting has continued to impress in the second half of the series. Especially Joan Sims; Jim Broadbent; Patricia Hodge. But we’ve also had more of Vic regulars Julie Walters; Celia Imrie; Susie Blake; Peter Martin and Philip Lowrie. Plus Una Stubbs as her usual dithery maid.

I’m really quite surprised to read how poorly this series is viewed. Victoria herself apparently disliked filming it, which is understandable given the location work and the fact it wasn’t shot in front of a studio audience. But I think it holds up really well. It hit the spot for me, anyway.

Each episode is essentially a Vic monologue come to life. Instead of telling us about the thing that happened to her last week, we see it first hand. And it’s all relatable stuff. Ask anyone who’s tried to erect a tent, been stuck in traffic or attended a cerebral dinner party when they’d prefer to be home watching telly. That’s why each awkward moment is so funny, and why the moments where Vic becomes confrontational - refusing to indulge Patricia Hodge’s snooty dinner party hostess by entertaining her guests; getting out of her car to bluntly instruct the woman driving the car in front on how to take a ticket from a machine - are so cathartic.

 

[Barbara Fan]

Patricia Hodge’s snooty dinner party hostess

She was great in that role and also to see people in roles before they became well known

I am still reading her Lets do it bio and have got to early 1980s - married to the Great Soprendo and doing double acts



They made an appearance on Wogan and here is what she had to say - 1982

 

[Mel O'Drama]

She was great in that role and also to see people in toles before they became well known

Oh most definitely. Just seeing names like Jim Broadbent or Peter Postlethwaite in the credits is very impressive now. She knew how to pick them!

I am still reading her Lets do it bio and have got to early 1980s - married to the Great Soprendo and doing double acts

Oh - interesting. I just had a look to see if that Wogan appearance was on YouTube but couldn't find it. There is a Wogan interview from 1991 but it's when Gloria Hunniford was standing in for Terry, which might have been why Vic returned.

She mentioned Geoffrey in one of the interviews on the Audience With... disc and spoke very favourably of him, saying how he made her laugh and she couldn't be with someone who didn't.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Sold Out



(1991)

​

I’m not 100% certain I’ve seen this one before, even though I also feel I must have. Either way the material never felt anything more than vaguely familiar.

It’s a typical mix of Vic’s standup and songs, featuring her hilariously sharp observations about everything from pregnancy to Deirdre Barlow’s perm getting shorter and tighter the more stressed she is (her brief gurning, deep voiced, cross-eyed impression of Deirdre on the phone to Ken is spot on, but manages to feel fond rather than cruel).

In her 1990 Sunday Sunday interview she told Gloria Hunniford that she’d recently discovered sex as material, before pretend apologising to the genteel audience for mentioning the “s” word. This is perhaps perfectly captured in one of the show’s highlights, where she described an evening of terribly British wife-swapping, which speaks for itself.

Beefburgers. Three minutes each side.​

She also covers pregnancy with the story of trying to pee on a paddle in peace.

The songs are both light and upbeat. The first is the Saturday night out song, and she closes perfectly with Reincarnation, which feels more meaningful now that she’s died.

​

The version I watched on YouTube came complete with early Nineties adverts, and I had fun trying to remember what each product was advertising. It also reminded me how perfect the satirical adverts on Wood & Walters and As Seen On TV were and I half expected some of these genuine-but-naff commercials to turn out to be spoofs.

​

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Julie Walters & Friends



(29th December 1991)

​

Now this one I hadn’t seen before. And what a concept: four brilliant writers who have been instrumental in Julie Walters’ career up to this point each write new material for her.

Despite being made up of distinct segments the smörgåsbord feels surprisingly cohesive, helped by the fact that all the writers share an ear for very human, very real (and frequently very Northern) dialogue.

There’s no mistaking this is a showcase for Julie, and it’s successful on this level with a couple of very impressive monologues, as well as songs. Something that’s come across strongly with rewatching all this material is that Julie has a really nice singing voice and gives the material the emotion you'd expect.

​

In terms of actors, it's a minimalistic affair, which is all to the good. Apart from Julie herself, the only other appearances are talking heads from the writers talking about Julie and appearances from a couple of them in sketches. But her friendship with the writers also comes across, and the respect and enjoyment seems to be a very two-way thing.


Julie plays a little girl to an old man, and pretty much everything in between.

​

And, after years of wondering about the inspiration for the name of an Almighty remixer who did some Abbacadabra tracks, I finally know who Mary Brazzle is.

​

 

[Alexis Colby Carrington]

Julie Walters & Friends



(29th December 1991)

​

Now this one I hadn’t seen before. And what a concept: four brilliant writers who have been instrumental in Julie Walters’ career up to this point each write new material for her.

Despite being made up of distinct segments the smörgåsbord feels surprisingly cohesive, helped by the fact that all the writers share an ear for very human, very real (and frequently very Northern) dialogue.

There’s no mistaking this is a showcase for Julie, and it’s successful on this level with a couple of very impressive monologues, as well as songs. Something that’s come across strongly with rewatching all this material is that Julie has a really nice singing voice and gives the material the emotion you'd expect.

​

In terms of actors, it's a minimalistic affair, which is all to the good. Apart from Julie herself, the only other appearances are talking heads from the writers talking about Julie and appearances from a couple of them in sketches. But her friendship with the writers also comes across, and the respect and enjoyment seems to be a very two-way thing.


Julie plays a little girl to an old man, and pretty much everything in between.

​

And, after years of wondering about the inspiration for the name of an Almighty remixer who did some Abbacadabra tracks, I finally know who Mary Brazzle is.

​

Mary Brazzle! Absolutely makes me howl with laughter! The shoddiest piece of knitwear since the shroud of Turin

 

[Barbara Fan]

I have never been au fait with Mary Brazzle, but i am now!! She looks like she would fit in well on morning TV!

I had totally forgotten until i re watched it last year that JW played Robert Lindsays mother in GBH! and that was 3 decades ago!!

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Mary Brazzle! Absolutely makes me howl with laughter! The shoddiest piece of knitwear since the shroud of Turin

She's great. Do you know if that was her only appearance? It feels like she should have returned somehow.

I had totally forgotten until i re watched it last year that JW played Robert Lindsays mother in GBH! and that was 3 decades ago!!

She reprised the role in Julie Walters & Friends in a brilliant monologue specially written for her by Alan Bleasdale:

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Victoria Wood’s All Day Breakfast



(25th December 1992)

​

I was on the verge of watching a ghostly VHS version on YouTube when I suddenly remembered IMDb mentioning that All Day Breakfast was repeated (unbelievably, for the first time ever) on Christmas Day 2020. A quick peek showed that it was indeed on iPlayer, which meant I could watch in crystal clarity, enhancing my viewing pleasure no end.

The This Morning spoof is spot-on. From the Royal Albert Dock backdrop to the awkward phone-ins. Duncan Preston had all of Richard Madeley’s mannerisms down perfectly, even if he could have comfortably stepped up the levels of smug. And Susie Blake made a brilliant Mad Lizzie/Green Goddess type.



Of the sketches featuring new characters, one which took a swipe at PC culture and SJWs, with a couple on a blind date in a pub:

My bedroom’s at the back of the house. It’s just been redecorated. My father did it all for me. I’m quite old-fashioned that way. I think men should do all that sort of thing an’ the women should sort of just come in at the end and say “you’ve missed a bit”… I think it was very nice back in the olden days… when a man could just hit a woman over the head with a club and just drag her back to his cave…

Well… that’s not something you often hear a woman say.

Women in general, Sean, isn’t it? They’re demanding, yes they want a nice home. But will they have sex with their husbands in return? No. They do it as and when they feel like it. It’s criminal. To me, the man is lord and master. I’m sorry. What he says goes.

I must admit, Nicola. It’s not a very popular point of view but… sometimes it would be very nice to have a woman around. Have sex when you wanted. Not to have to be nice to her for hours beforehand. Or you could just click your fingers and she’d do your ironing.

That’s right. Just treat her like an object. A sort of sex and housework machine.

Can’t deny that would be quite an agreeable state of affairs.

She blows a whistle and two female police officers barge in and grab him as Nicola produces her ID card:

OK sir. I’m arresting you on suspicion of harbouring politically incorrect thoughts about today’s women.

It’s a brief sketch, almost hidden among others, many of which are more memorable. All the same, it feels like a brave statement for a female writer to take, and perhaps Vic gets away with it because she’s said that she doesn’t view herself as a “female” comic/writer. Her gender doesn’t come into it. There are no sacred cows for her, and she’s not about to use her position to feel better about herself at someone else’s expense. She simply writes and performs what’s funny, with no wish to feel stifled by trends. She’s not at all concerned with being popular in order to say what she wants.

The idea of a PC honey trap baiting unsuspecting men with false promises works well because it’s something that at the time would have been seen as an extreme. Again and again Nicola doggedly elicits the reaction she wants. Then once she reluctantly gets it, she overreacts. That's the punchline. That's the joke.

When the (female) bartender chastises Nicola for posing as a post-feminist, Nicola sniffs and matter of factly points out that it’s a dirty world. For her, the end - her desired outcome - justifies the means. If anything it’s more relevant today, and arguably foreshadows 21st Century social media trends where the lines between feminism and misandry can become blurred. Nervous, agreeable Sean is condemned not on his deeds but because the image she's projected onto him proves he is what she wants him to be: a toxic male. No more and no less. He is the one dehumanised and objectified, and punished for meeting her expectations.

Nicola's behaviour is extreme, anti-social and unacceptable. And here it is recognised as such. The audience get it and they applaud the outrageousness. The end result is both very funny and brutally honest, two things Vic does best.

If I remember correctly, Vic took aim at political correctness a little more throughout the Nineties, and I'm looking forward to seeing how other examples hold up.

(continued)​

 

[Mel O'Drama]

Victoria Wood’s All Day Breakfast





(continued)

​

I was most looking forward to revisiting The Mall, the successor to (and, as it turned out in the final instalment, a spin-off from) Acorn Antiques, updated for the Eldorado era.

Though we were served a few wonderful moments of the “actors” tripping over their lines, and a camera came into shot at least once, it struck me that The Mall has less focus on technical hiccups and more on the contrivances in the writing, particularly the tendency to wallop the audience about the head with exposition and pipe-laying as we initially meet the characters. Such as Pippa preparing to open her new shop in the opening scene:

Only three more minutes and then we find out if divorcing my husband, moving to Gloucesterfordshire, opening an exclusive lingerie shop in a practically brand new shopping mall was such a good idea after all. No tea for you, Jackie?

Thanks but no thanks. Can’t seem to face it somehow, with my eating disorder.

And so it goes. Vic herself is great fun as a Trish Valentine/Pat Butcher type brassy gossip with a heart of gold. And Philip Lowrie regularly stole the show as the camp gay cafe owner, filling every line with innuendo, my favourite of which came when he offered Duncan Preston’s character a cappuccino, made by his assistant/toyboy lover:

Pierre can whip you up a frothy one in no time.

The set could conceivably have belonged to a cheap-ish daytime serial. I can imagine it being the kind of setup that viewers might have found reassuring. Its lack of scale made it feel intimate and cosy, all of which added to the believability of The Mall, which is incredibly helpful with satire.

It was a treat to have a number of instalments appearing throughout the one special, which allowed it to be both serial and one-and-done deal at the same time.


The identity of the mysterious new arrival was perfectly played with enjoyably unsubtle hints and interrupted sentences to build the excitement:

Apparently she’s a cleaner who was left a huge legacy when all her employers were killed in a mysterious food poisoning accident on the M42.

That is mysterious, because there are no services on the M42.

And she’s moved here from a little town called Man….

The door opens, interrupting Pippa's crucial line.

Mrs Overall’s inevitable arrival was a great moment, and it’s so good to hear the audience reaction when she arrives and opens a new branch of Acorn Antiques. Naturally, the bad acting goes into overdrive. My favourite moment, naturally, was Mrs O's single scene. After cutting off Roger mid-line (with the actor looking suitably irritated) she had to walk from one side of the Mall to the other, speaking and with three characters following her. It's just hilarious. They start, but she's too slow and they bump into one another. She recovers a little, but as she repeats her line, the fountain in the middle suddenly stops (presumably someone's realised it's obscuring the view of them and drowning out the sound) and she glares at it in confusion. Then she's so busy looking for her very visible mark on the floor she trips over her lines:

I'll pop the immersion on, an' we can all 'ave a nice cuff of cot hoppy. Hot copy.

The return of perhaps Vic’s most iconic and enduring creation alone makes this special feel incredibly important. I even love that it’s a huge retcon, since Mrs O. was killed off in Acorn Antiques. It’s another nod to the lack of attention writers sometimes pay to previous stories, and I like that Vic decided sod it and gave Mrs O. a happy ending (if not the rest of the Acorn Antiques characters). You can tell everyone involved is having a whale of a time, and none more so that Julie Walters who makes Mrs Overall's return a reason to cheer.

Unusually for a 50 minute show, there’s just one solo stand-up/singing piece, which is saved for the very end. And it works well. This format could easily have run to a series, but instead condenses what Vic does best into less than an hour. There’s no chaff or filler and it ends up being a lovely little time capsule.

Anyone with iPlayer might want to take advantage of this being there before it’s taken down in five days’ time. While there, I noticed there are a few more Vic-related shows, including an episode of Mastermind with Victoria Wood as one of the specialist subjects. I’ll certainly be diving into that one in the coming days.

 

[Mel O'Drama]

In related news, Victoria Wood was in a dream I had last night (probably inevitable given my saturation of her material in the last couple of weeks):

I was in some grotty pub in the Welsh valleys, and Vic was performing at the piano. I stood against the wall next to the piano, some feet away from Vic. It was lunchtime on a weekday, something told me. There were some other customers kind of round the corner in a big bay window, but they all carried on rowdily chatting and laughing as she went through her set. I don't think anyone really knew who she was.

She started playing The Ballad Of Barry And Freda, and even though it may have been the first time she'd performed it in public I started singing along when it got to the opening line. I remember thinking how loud and deep my voice sounded. Then I realised Vic had stopped singing (or perhaps she hadn't started). She was most unhappy that (a) someone knew the lyrics before she'd sung them and so knew what the punchlines would be and (b) someone had the cheek to sing along.

Fortunately, the conversation of the rabble round the corner sounded a little like singing and as she hadn't seen my mouth move she assumed it was coming from them and I was back in her good books as she went back to performing.

I think she was quite pleased to have a fan there. And I know I was glad to be there.