Victoria Wood

by Neil Brandwood

  In the midst of all the acclaim Victoria presented a diffidence and modesty at odds with her internal drive and ambition. She dismissed Talent as ‘just a little story, quite funny and also a bit sad’. Even the actual effort involved in writing it was shrouded in modesty: ‘They paid me a hell of a lot of money for the TV rights. It was easy money really because all I had to do was take bits out of the stage play. I’m glad that people liked it, but to me it wasn’t a fantastic play. I just wanted to get a few laughs,’ she told the Daily Mail.

  At times she seemed to want to collude with the press in projecting an image of down-to-earth Northern practicality; her head was not going to be turned by all this fame nonsense. ‘Nobody in Morecambe knows who I am, thank goodness,’ she told reporters, completely ignoring the fact that she had craved fame since childhood. The double-talk also extended to Morecambe itself, which was painted as an idyllic place to live and where Victoria, with all her steely ambition, was apparently pleased to judge an old folks’ talent show. ‘We like Morecambe,’ she said. ‘It’s nice. It’s quiet and full of old people.’

  Years later, when she was ensconced in her Highgate mansion, Victoria described her decision to live in Morecambe as mad, stupid and a strange, mental aberration, but the town, or rather its inhabitants, did merit some genuine appreciation by Victoria who found inspiration in their dourness. She was particularly tickled by an exchange she overheard in the fish and chip shop. ‘“T’pier’s burnt down” said one woman, to which her friend replied “bout time”.’

  Victoria’s tolerance of the media in those early days did not extend to her own family and a rift developed between her and her brother because of comments he made to the press. It made an already remote relationship almost nonexistent. By that time Chris Foote-Wood had left engineering, established a news and sports agency in Bishop Auckland and had married his second wife, Frances, a schoolteacher whose surname he incorporated into his own in the interests of sexual equality.

  ‘An award-winning journalist phoned me up and asked what Victoria was like, if she was blonde, what her vital statistics were and things like that. I stupidly gave him her phone number and he rang her up and told her what I’d said. It was very hurtful,’ Foote-Wood said of the falling out. It was not the only time Victoria’s fame created problems for him. He successfully won a claim against a BBC North East journalist who implied that he was Victoria’s half-brother. ‘I won the case but it did me no favours and I’ve not been on television since,’ lamented Foote-Wood who, as a journalist and would-be Liberal MP, would have undoubtedly welcomed television exposure.

  Once the fuss about Talent had died down, Victoria applied herself to writing the Codron play. She completed it in October and called it Good Fun. With it out of the way she could reciprocate Geoffrey’s support and spent that Christmas Day at a York hotel where he had got a booking. The decade which had begun with such misery and frustration for Victoria could not have ended more differently. The end of the 1970s marked the end of the false starts for Victoria. She was about to enter third gear.

  The first month of the new decade saw her gaining the professional approval and public recognition so necessary to her. The ICA production of Talent in London won her the Plays and Players’ Most Promising New Playwright award, judged by 18 London theatre critics. There were 14 nominations and it was thanks to votes by Robert Cushman of the Observer, Kenneth Hurren of What’s On In London, David Nathan of the Jewish Chronicle and Irving Wardle of The Times that Victoria won.

  That same month saw her sharing the Most Promising Playwright title with Richard Harris for his suburban cricket club comedy, Outside Edge, at the Evening Standard Drama Awards. The prestige of the occasion persuaded Victoria to renege on her usual dress code and she donned a frock bought from an oversize clothing company. It was too big for her. At the party afterwards she was rudely brought down to earth when an arm stretched across and flicked some cigarette ash into the bowl-like award she was clutching. Princess Margaret had assumed Victoria was an ashtray wallah. Typically dismissive, and eager to portray herself as domestically eccentric, Victoria later revealed one of the awards ended up in a plastic bag of Christmas decorations, and the other behind a rubber plant adorned with a string of plastic sausages.

  Sometimes she seemed to be equally dismissive of her audiences, describing them as ‘mainly young people or older people who think they’re 21 but aren’t’. Clearly, she wished to avoid ghettoising herself: her aim was to be enjoyed by a universal audience. If she could not achieve this, she stated, she might as well shoot herself.

  Rehearsals for Nearly A Happy Ending, the television sequel to Talent, were completed in February 1980; a five-day shoot was scheduled for the same month; Granada had asked for another play for 1981; and in the middle of this, rehearsals for Good Fun were due to begin. Somewhat perversely, Victoria decided it was a good time to fit in marriage.

  Geoffrey had been badgering her to marry him almost from the start of their relationship, but, perhaps mindful of her own parents’ marriage and the failure of her brother’s first marriage, Victoria had been reluctant. ‘I didn’t get married for years because I thought the whole idea too naff for words,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to get married. He did. Every day he’d ask me to marry him.’ In the end it was the number of rows about why they were not married that made her finally relent.

  Today the celebrity wedding makes front-page news, and magazine deals make them a lucrative proposition, but back in 1980 Victoria and Geoffrey took the low-key wedding to new heights. Her heavy workload helped make the marriage merely incidental, which was what she wanted. There were no rings and, less surprisingly in view of Victoria’s relationship with her family, no relatives present. They had planned to marry on 29 February so anniversaries would only occur on leap years, but this plan was abandoned, along with Morecambe Register Office as the venue. Farcically, it was impossible to be married in the town because the register office was only licensed for deaths. Instead Victoria and Geoffrey drove over to Lancaster with their friend Alyson Lloyd, her husband and their baby, and were married at the Queen Street Register Office at 9.50 a.m. on Saturday, 1 March. The ‘reception’ was held at the cafe across the road and the honeymoon was a night in Buxton with Victoria returning to Sheffield the next day for a read-through of Good Fun.

  Not wearing a wedding ring and declining to take Geoffrey’s surname were Victoria’s ways of making a statement about her independence. ‘I was a bit embarrassed by it all and didn’t want people to know just by looking at me,’ she explained. ‘I felt marriage was an odd thing to do. Most of my friends just lived together. It took me a long time to get used to the fact I was married.’ But once the act was done she had no regrets. ‘We’ve got such an emotional bond together. That’s why I married him. You only marry someone if you think them the best person possible and that’s what Geoff is. I have a better time with him than anyone else.’

  The idea of being a ‘wife’ had never appealed to her, which suited Geoffrey. ‘I couldn’t have married someone who wasn’t an entertainer,’ he said. ‘Victoria understands the pressures. Other people might want a wife who does the dishes and stays home looking after the children, but that’s not for me.’

  Most brides-to-be diet furiously for their big day, but for Victoria weight loss was an occupational necessity. In Nearly A Happy Ending, Maureen is proud of reaching her target weight at a slimming club, which meant Victoria had to shed the pounds. She achieved this by swapping chocolate for salad and fruit, and taking up swimming. Every morning Victoria, Walters and director Baz Taylor would head to Salford Baths. In time she worked up from one length to twenty-six and slimmed down from thirteen stone to ten-and-a-half stone in the process, but there was to be no lasting record of the streamlined bride because the wedding photographs were mislaid on a bus.

  Talent may have been aptly named, but Good Fun could not have been more inappropriately titled. It premiered on Good Friday 1980 and was an unhappy
experience for those involved.

  The central character of the play is Liz. She is ruthlessly exploited and manipulated by Geography teacher and avant-garde Punch and Judy man Mike (Gregory Floy), who, it emerges, is suffering from mental illness. Hovering around her is Frank (Charles McKeown), an immature and wimpish librarian who wants to bed her. Elsie is an old friend of Liz who provides a cynical commentary on events. Gail (Noreen Kershaw, who had also appeared in Stanley Wood’s Clogs!) is the despised schoolmate lured to the arts centre under false pretences.

  Liz, a community arts administrator, is thrown into a panic when she discovers the first big event she has been given responsibility for, a reception for 300 cystitis sufferers, is scheduled for the next day, earlier than she had expected. She ropes everyone in to help, including Lynne (Sue Wallace), a surly, pregnant 19-year-old who works in the salad bar, and her unemployed boyfriend, Kevin (Joe Figg). Adding to the numbers is Betty, a disco-dancing cosmetics saleswoman and her husband, Maurice (Christopher Hancock), head of the Co-op carpet department and a novelty hedgetrimmer.

  Mike makes a move on Lynne, to Liz’s chagrin. Her double bluffs fail and she strikes a deal with Lynne to take the baby off her hands. By lunchtime the next day the place is almost ready. A romance develops between Frank and Gail. Elsie takes a phone call from the cystitis woman who informs her that 300 of them will be marching down in about 20 minutes. Mike, who turns out to be the son of Betty and Maurice, reveals himself to be a pathological liar, but Liz continues to blind herself to his faults. All the signs point to disaster, but Liz gets a telegram informing her that the reception has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. They tuck into the food and drink. Liz casually informs Lynne that the baby deal is off and, if it is not too late for an abortion, she could help with the bureaucracy. Gail proudly reveals she’s played her first practical joke; she sent the telegram and the cystitis reception is still on. She and Frank leave. Lynne, who has taken an overdose, is taken to hospital by Betty and Maurice. Liz dismisses Lynne as a silly cow and Elsie is shocked by such callousness. She thought Liz’s big thing was being a nice person. Liz is left alone on the stage.

  In the play Elsie mockingly describes an incident where a theatre group performed a play about housewives outside Tesco’s in an Arndale Centre. They made ‘jokes’ about Margaret Thatcher and expected a show of support from shoppers, who were not impressed and just wanted to get into the supermarket. Similarly, it could be said that Good Fun did not live up to Talent because Victoria did not heed her own satire. Talent’s broad scope was accessible to all, but the trials of a community arts administrator working in an arts centre had limited appeal to those unfamiliar with that world. Perhaps aware of this problem, Victoria compensated and tried to accommodate a wider audience by cramming less esoteric gags into Good Fun. The result was a work that fell between two extremes: a dark play of minority appeal shot through with unsubtle humour. Even the Islington crowd, who one might assume would have been the most knowing audience, were not impressed. When Victoria went to see the King’s Head production during its six-week run in October of that year she heard a punter remark ‘It’s a bit witty witty, isn’t it?’ It was only eight years later, when the two plays were published by Methuen, that Victoria publicly acknowledged the play’s failings, admitting she never got it right and did not really know what she was doing with it.

  With the casting, Victoria once again presented herself as a reluctant performer, claiming that she only wrote herself into it under duress after the producers refused to stage it without her. She created Elsie, a cynical and candid 24-year-old bistro barmaid, whom she described as a version of herself ‘with all the horrible bits knocked out’. Later she would dismiss the role as ‘some jokes and an anorak’.

  The lead role of the unsympathetic Liz, the 24-year-old community arts administrator, was taken by Annabel Leventon after Julie Walters turned it down in favour of playing Betty. Walters’ choice was not surprising as Betty was a comedic tour-de-force and an irresistible part, even though it did involve ageing up by 22 years. The role was the first of Victoria’s comic grotesques (at first Betty is mistaken for a drag artist) that Walters would play.

  Leventon was the only established actress in the cast, having starred in the original production of Hair and a number of West End comedies. By coincidence she had directed the play Morecambe to great success at the Hampstead Theatre at the same time Victoria was performing Wordplay there. On first seeing the script of Good Fun she thought it was the funniest thing she had ever read and cried with laughter, but the laughter did not last long.

  ‘It wasn’t one of those relationships that gelled,’ she said of the experience of working with Victoria. ‘I wasn’t comfortable. I felt out of it.’ She attributed the problem to Victoria’s insecurity and David Leland’s weak direction, lack of sympathy and inability to create good relations between the cast. Matters were made worse when hopes of a West End transfer were dashed. After seeing an early performance Codron took Victoria and Leland out for a meal and all thoughts of a transfer were dropped. ‘It was such a disappointment. They were all so sure it was going into town. It kind of fell apart,’ said Leventon. ‘There was an awful air of disappointment that hung over it. There was a big push towards the West End and everybody had high hopes because of Talent and then when it dropped I think everybody’s confidence dropped.’

  The rejection dented Victoria’s pride and confidence. During her schooldays, when events did not go the way she wanted, she withdrew. This defensive mechanism was reactivated and Victoria concentrated on her individual performance, which, at times, meant others were upstaged.

  ‘I think it was out of her control in a sense because we didn’t have a strong director who allowed her to feel confident in what was happening,’ said Leventon. ‘It’s the director who builds the team and if you haven’t got a good team builder people tend to get anxious and go out and protect themselves. She [Victoria] was on the line with that show and I think she went out and protected herself and unfortunately the effect of that is not necessarily very good on the other people on stage. It’s not a pretty atmosphere and I don’t think she created that but I do think she was a victim of it.

  ‘I think she must have been very selective about the people she trusted and I suppose I’m not used to being competed with on stage and not being trusted. It was a bit of a shock to find someone who’d written it not supporting you on stage when you’re out there doing your best. She was very competitive on stage.’

  Leventon added: ‘She acted like a solo performer rather than a member of a team so instead of you working together for a laugh you’d set up one thing and you’d find the laugh would be killed by a laugh that came from down over there which you knew nothing about, which is very isolating.’

  She believed Victoria’s behaviour came from an instinct of self-preservation, but it made for an extremely unhappy state of affairs. ‘If you get on really well with a person you can say “What the hell were you doing?” but if you don’t, you can’t. I’m used to people who have a good time with each other on stage and who help each other … I didn’t find that the case. It made it very hard work because you’re working on your own, and to me theatre’s teamwork and she’s a solo performer.’

  The crisis was exacerbated when Victoria realised Walters was not prepared to be in the planned revised version of the play. She had been offered the lead role in Willy Russell’s Educating Rita and Leventon remembered Walters fretting that her defection might be seen as disloyal by Victoria. Wisely, Walters did go on to do the play at the RSC Warehouse and, later, at the Piccadilly Theatre in the West End. The role of the Liverpudlian hairdresser earned her the Drama Critic’s Most Promising Newcomer Award, the Variety Club’s Best Newcomer Award and, ultimately, stardom.

  The hallmarks of Victoria Wood first introduced in Talent, continued into her second play. The famous names dropped became even more frequent and eclectic (from Louis Armstrong to Raquel Welch). Te
xtiles would weave their way throughout Victoria’s career and in Good Fun she mentioned Lurex, cheesecloth, nylon and acrylic. Garments, too, pop up frequently, with Victoria preferring the unglamorous or impractical (such as surgical stockings, stretch pants and support hose).

  During rehearsals for Good Fun Victoria was interviewed by the radio programme Arena and commented on why there were so few female comics: ‘I suppose women think they shouldn’t [go into comedy] because it’s not quite nice – because all comedy’s aggression and women have been brought up not to be aggressive.’ She certainly illustrated her defiance of convention in Good Fun with unabashed mention of all things sexual and gynaecological. In the same Arena interview Victoria made plain her antipathy to the whole pseudo-political agit-prop community arts movement. ‘I find it deeply depressing,’ she said. ‘There’s no laughs in it usually. Well their idea of a laugh is to sort of dress up as William Pitt the Younger which I don’t think is highly amusing.’ She parodied this in the play, which includes an avant-garde Punch and Judy show where the crocodile is the DHSS, and Judy is pregnant because of faulty counselling by the Family Planning. An ‘all-night Madrigal event’ is given short shrift, and Elsie casts a satirical eye over Launderdrama, a theatrical group who perform shows in launderettes.

  Afflictions, illness and bizarre injuries were things that Victoria liked to milk for humour. In Good Fun mention is made of everything from diabetes to impetigo, and even Punch has a colostomy bag! But it is the embarrassing and therefore comical cystitis that was used as an actual plot point. This led to letters of complaint from sufferers which Victoria dealt with in the same flippant way she had responded to those who criticised Talent. When one woman wrote to tell her ‘I’ve got cystitis and it isn’t funny’, Victoria fired off the reply ‘Send it back and ask for one that is.’