Other actors whom Victoria had worked with previously and felt she could trust were rewarded with smaller parts, namely Jim Broadbent, Peter Ellis, Meg Johnson and Sue Wallace. David Firman, the musical director of Good Fun, was also appointed the musical director for the series.
Rehearsals began in July and filming was done in August and September. At the studios Victoria boosted her energy levels by doing Jane Fonda’s workout with Blake.
The show was scheduled for a November broadcast and to capitalise on it Victoria arranged a short tour. The billboards read: VICTORIA WOOD AS SEEN ON TV, which backfired somewhat when the BBC decided to put back the series until January 1985.
The shrewd financial awareness Victoria was beginning to display was evident when she released an LP of a Lucky Bag show that had been performed at the Edinburgh Festival. In 1984 Methuen also published the Lucky Bag songbook, a collection of fourteen of her songs from the past six years, with an introduction culled from the theatre programme for Lucky Bag. Oddly, especially as Victoria had been upset by remarks about her weight in the past, Beryl Cooke was commissioned to paint a back view of her for the front cover, naked apart from a straining corset. That, along with her decision to surround herself with the petite and gamine Walters, Blake and Imrie for the show, suggested that Victoria was beginning to overcome her hangup about her weight. She had even taken to wearing sweatshirts with LARGE written across the front for interviews.
‘Chipper’ Patel arrived from New Delhi in 1962 with an artificial leg and five pounds in his pocket. He now controls a multi-million pound vinyl flooring empire. He didn’t want to be filmed. So here’s a tatty old comedy programme with some women in it.
With that larky Radio Times listing, Victoria introduced As Seen On TV to the British public. The attention to detail – how many writers would pay such attention to a listing? – showed just how committed Victoria was to the show.
The first As Seen On TV was broadcast at 9 p.m. on BBC2 on 11 January 1985 and the structure of the programme remained the same for the entire series. Victoria would dash on stage, dressed in blazer and loose tie with multicoloured highlights in her hair and treat the studio audience to five minutes of her old stand-up routine with the occasional variation. An ‘advert’ would follow, and then a fairly long sketch for Victoria and Walters or Imrie. Susie Blake would pop up here and there dripping sarcasm and snobbery as the continuity presenter, brief traditional-style ‘shortie’ gags, a song from Victoria, various character monologues, an episode of ‘Acorn Antiques’, a parody of a televisual genre, and a documentary completed the main framework of each show.
The problem with discussing As Seen On TV in retrospect is that since it first appeared so many others have been influenced by Victoria’s style. But back then her articulation of the everyday ludicrousness of life and her grasp of what was funny was truly unique.
Some of the ‘documentaries’ gave an insight into key areas of Victoria’s troubled past and allowed a degree of purging through laughter. ‘Swim The Channel’ gave a frank message to Helen and Stanley Wood. Victoria played Chrissie, an innocent adolescent determined to swim the Channel. The humour stemmed from her naiveté and the rubber swimming cap which remained glued to her head, but it was the pathos that made the impact. The parents were totally disinterested in Chrissie and had even forgotten they had any children. In a scene reminiscent of the young Victoria’s journeys to and from Bury Military Band, Chrissie is seen setting off for the coast alone while her parents head in the other direction, bound for London to catch an Andrew Lloyd Webber. The last shot – after Chrissie has gone missing – is of her empty bedroom with her Annie posters and her bear, Mr Teddy.
The exorcism continued with ‘To Be An Actress’, in which Mary Jo Randle played Sarah Wells, a 24-year-old who has not had an acting job in the three years since leaving drama school. Randle had grown up not far from Victoria in Rochdale and had followed her to Birmingham in 1972, where she hated the drama course so much she switched to social sciences. In this documentary Victoria got her revenge on the auditioning pencil-thin identikit actresses, the pretentiousness of the profession, the casting couch, the self-obsession and the backbiting. The play which Sarah eventually wins a role in is not dissimilar to Educating Rita and featured Lill Roughley – an actress Victoria spotted working alongside Geoffrey in 1977 – as Mrs Mottershead.
‘On Campus’ was Victoria’s take on the university experience, most noticeably the cruelty and bleakness of it. Victoria played Hilary, an overweight, slightly awkward undergraduate desperately seeking friendship. We see her sitting unhappily alone at the freshers ball and the target of a practical joke. When she attempts suicide her ‘friend’, Selina (Tilly Vosburgh) unsympathetically points out ‘If you’re fat and ugly with a hopeless personality, you’re probably better off taking an overdose.’
Victoria turned her attention to Bury Grammar for ‘Just An Ordinary School’, in which she mocked the exclusivity and insularity of the public school system – the school featured has electronic gates and awards the Oswald Mosley prize for public speaking.
‘A Fairly Ordinary Man’ was set in a geographical replica of Bury and portrayed Victoria’s North as a dismal, grim place, populated by dreary people. Jim punctuated his speech with ‘erm’ just as Mrs Starkey, a teacher at Bury Grammar, had.
Not all the documentaries in the series were of a biographical nature. ‘Whither The Arts?’ allowed Victoria to document the behind-the-scenes build-up to a musical based on Bessie Bunter in her own inimitable way, and ‘The Divorce’ had Maureen Lipman as the nervy, embittered Ruth recounting the horror of domestic disharmony.
Standout sketches included ‘In The Office’ and ‘Shoe Shop’ (shops and offices, along with libraries, were favourite comedic locations for Victoria). In the latter, which was one of Victoria’s favourite sketches of the series, she took the absurd behaviour of unhelpful shop assistants to surreal heights. With ‘In The Office’ she expertly captured the truth that in everyday life it is the small things that loom largest (the characters Connie and Beattie discuss last night’s television news but it is not world events that concern them, it is the newsreader’s blouse).
Some sketches were not simply one-offs and the characters appeared throughout the series. This was the case with those doyennes of housewifely daytime television, Margery and Joan. If Joan (Victoria) was based on Judith Chalmers, then Margery (Walters) was a combination of Esther Rantzen and Tomorrow’s World’s Judith Hann. Carl and Gail were regulars, discussing such weighty issues as guttering from their seat in the bus shelter, and Kitty often put in an appearance.
This Cheadle-based monster was played by Patricia Routledge (one of the pool of actresses, along with Thora Hird and Walters, shared by Victoria and Alan Bennett). Kitty could be seen as a relative of Dotty from Wood & Walters, both are agony aunts of sorts. Sitting in her chair she would hold forth with robust opinions on everything from lesbianism to mashed swede. But whereas Dotty was earthy, Kitty is more uptight and quicker to become indignant. To show her forthrightness, Victoria originally had Kitty introduce herself with ‘I’ve had a boob off and I can’t stomach whelks.’ Whether it was BBC pressure or objections by Routledge herself, the mastectomy reference was changed to ‘I’ve given gallons of blood.’ It is difficult to imagine anyone other than Routledge delivering such lines as ‘I’ve had my share of gynaecological gyp. I still can’t polka without wincing but we’re spunky in Cheadle, we totter on.’
Julie Walters was also given the opportunity for character monologue in ‘Giving Notes’, in which she played Alma, the director of the Piecrust Players’ hysterically crass version of Hamlet (‘if you dry just give us a bit of business with the shower cap’). It may have been light entertainment for the masses but Victoria was not afraid to throw in an esoteric joke here and there (‘It’s not like Pinter where you can more or less say what you like as long as you leave enough gaps.’)
Self-deprecation was still present
in As Seen On TV, with Victoria likening herself to a bale of hay with bosoms, and a horse box with highlights. Susie Blake, as the continuity announcer, complained of ‘weak-willed, self-indulgent guzzlers’ with ‘enormous flabby arms’ and the voice-over at the end of one show remarked flatly: ‘There’ll be more attempts at comedy from the overweight comedienne next week.’
A Northernness permeated the series, even down to the distinctive surnames used (Mottershead, Witherslack, Postlethwaite). Victoria highlighted London prejudice mainly through Blake’s continuity announcer. She snootily made an apology to those living in the North (‘it must be awful for them’) and explained a plot for ‘those of you living outside the London area who probably aren’t very intelligent’. In ‘To Be An Actress’ Sarah is so desperate she is prepared to work anywhere, ‘even the North’. But despite Victoria’s apparent censure, she was not averse to patronising Northerners herself in some of the sketches, especially the ‘slow-witted Northern pair’ Carl and Gail in ‘Young Love’.
The songs, still regarded by some as a necessary evil, were written especially for the series. They tended to be about relationships, with Victoria as the abused partner (‘All In The Game’), the appalled partner (‘So Pissed Off With Love’) or the disillusioned partner (‘Go Away’). The latter was a serious, heartfelt reflection of a dead relationship, belonging in the same category as ‘Don’t Do It’.
There was a happy relationship in ‘Big Brass Band’, but the passion was for the band. Victoria made no concessions to those who still criticised her for being unfeminine and she sang the song in the narrative voice of ‘a simple Northern lad’ who is so shy he takes his brass band on honeymoon. This number gave Victoria the opportunity to realise a childhood ambition and be backed by a traditional brass band.
The series also included a gospel song set in the cafe of a department store and sung by a sisterhood of shoppers bemoaning the tribulations of shopping, and a jokey farewell song (‘Saying Goodbye Isn’t Necessarily Depressing By Any Stretch Of The Imagination’). The most bizarre song, ‘I’m Gonna Knock, Knock, Knock, Knock, On Your Knocker’, was performed by a trio. It was an absolutely straight 1950s-style number, which was even filmed in black and white. Completely unexpected – it was inserted during a supposed technical hitch – the only reason for its inclusion appears to have been Victoria’s caprice. Perhaps she wanted to try a pastiche and this was the only way of letting it see the light of day.
For the soap-addicted Victoria a parody was inevitable, and she created ‘Acorn Antiques’, perhaps her greatest achievement in the eyes of many. The drama, set in a shop near Manchesterford, became an instant classic, as Victoria knew it would. ‘I remember when I first wrote Acorn Antiques,’ she recalled. ‘Geoffrey said: “I don’t think people will ever get that.” I said “I think they will.”’
The missed cues, the corpsing, the dropping out of character, the complete lack of talent, the poor improvisation when things went wrong, the wobbly sets, the unreliable props and the clumsy camera angles were all largely inspired by Crossroads. The hunchbacked charwoman, Mrs Overall (Julie Walters), was clearly based on Crossroads’ Amy Turtle, and the dim handyman Derek (Kenny Ireland), was inspired by the Midland motel’s Benny. Just as Crossroads tried to go upmarket by introducing a recreation centre, ‘Acorn Antiques’ branched out to offer sunbed and leisure facilities as well as Michelangelo’s sculptures. Even the clumsy end credit sequence and the enigmatic cliffhanger (‘Could you fetch my briefcase, Mrs Overall? I’d like to show Miss Babs my theodolite’) were a steal from Crossroads.
The relationships between the characters were even more complicated and illogical than the plot. The unseen Kenneth is Babs’s (Celia Imrie) husband and, apparently, the father of her triplets. Babs also has an unseen son, Bobby, and a secret daughter – the troublesome Trixie (Rosie Collins) – who has a dalliance with Babs’s cousin, Jerez (Peter Ellis), an affair with Derek, who could be the real father of Babs’s triplets, and an evil twin cousin. It is not actually specified that Berta (Victoria) is the sister of Babs, she definitely does not share a father with her. Berta marries Clifford (Duncan Preston), an old flame of Babs’s and it emerges she is the twin sister of Derek and the daughter of Mrs Overall. Clifford and Derek have a ‘sordid’ relationship.
It was even unclear who actually owned the shop. It is ‘a family antiques business’, not necessarily Miss Babs’s. And although Miss Berta is the majority shareholder, it is Mrs Overall who is the sole beneficiary.
Paying as much attention to detail as ever, Victoria made sure she strictly observed the conventions of soap from the shock deaths (car crash, choking and electrocution by a household appliance) to convoluted intrigue, corruption and lack of continuity. Another soap staple, the quick-fix solution, was in plentiful supply. All it takes is a phone call from Babs and the Town Hall agrees to reroute the motorway through some poor people’s houses; a quick word with the vicar means Trixie can marry her own brother; Berta is cured and released from intensive care when she tells her doctor that she has to help out in the shop; Mrs Overall’s attempt at mass poisoning is glossed over as silly attention seeking; Trixie becomes a nun; Jerez becomes a kindly benefactor.
In an attempt to inject some glamour into proceedings foreign locations were referenced (a mysterious phone call from Kuwait, Clifford’s return from Zurich; Derek and Trixie’s plans to flee to Morocco and Cousin Jerez’s arrival from Marbella).
There were also laughably heavy-handed attempts at authenticity and a desire to suggest the writers had done their research. ‘Gainsborough’s Blue Boy? Yes, I think we have it in mauve,’ says Miss Babs in one of her many one-sided phone calls. And Miss Berta is perturbed to discover they have been charged for seven Laughing Cavaliers. One episode even credited an ‘Antiques adviser’.
At the time that ‘Acorn Antiques’ was first seen, EastEnders, in an attempt to prove its gritty reality, was suffering from disease-of-the-week syndrome, which did not escape Victoria’s sharp pen. So in ‘Acorn Antiques’ Berta has a bone marrow transplant, suffers from amnesia and is in intensive care for non-specified reasons. Babs has a fatal allergy to men’s pyjamas, and spite and promiscuity could inflame Trixie’s jaundice. It is little wonder that at one point Mrs Overall asks ‘Have you got an incurable disease, or is it just the sterilised milk?’
Such was the impact of ‘Acorn Antiques’ that fans started a fanzine and held appreciation gatherings where they would dress like the characters and recite lines from the show. Its popularity led to the release of a video omnibus in 1993, and also contributed to As Seen On TV enjoying a word-of-mouth success that grew so that by the penultimate episode it was attracting 4.55 million viewers, making it the tenth most popular programme on BBC2.
9
VICTORIA WAS NOT the only Northerner in the public eye in the mid-1980s. The complicated Manchester singer Morrissey, lead singer with The Smiths, had emerged as the spokesman for dispossessed Northern youth. Just as the press had compartmentalised Victoria as some jolly, down-to-earth comedienne, they had Morrissey labelled as a humourless depressive. To link the two Northern stars would have seemed ludicrous, yet they shared characteristics. Morrissey’s sly sense of humour was usually overlooked in the same way that Victoria’s darker side tended to be ignored. He ‘hijacked’ Victoria for the song ‘Rusholme Ruffians’, which appeared on the group’s Meat Is Murder album. Morrissey borrowed the wistful and regretful lyrics of Victoria’s ‘Fourteen Again’ and adapted them to give an even bleaker reading. Where Victoria wrote
The last night of the fair
French Kissing as the kiosks shut
Behind the generators with your coconut.
Morrissey sang:
The last night of the fair by the big wheel generator
a boy is stabbed and his money is grabbed.
In ‘Fourteen Again’ there is the romantic ‘The coloured lights reflected in the Brylcreem on his hair’, whereas in ‘Rusholme Ruffians’ there is
the more sexually urgent ‘the grease in the hair of a speedway operator is all a tremulous heart requires’. Where Victoria is nostalgic (‘When I was funny I was famous’) Morrissey is scathing (‘She is famous she is funny’). In both songs the protagonist turns to self-mutilation with a fountain pen.
Morrissey, known for his obsessive hero worship, added Victoria to his list of idols which also included Sandie Shaw and Pat Phoenix. He even joked about marrying her. Victoria responded by telling audiences: ‘Morrissey and I have been married for eleven months, though due to touring commitments we have yet to meet.’
A variety of projects helped keep Victoria’s profile visible after As Seen On TV had ended. She was the subject of the BBC2 school programme, Scene, and helped present Insight, the educational programme for deaf children. In June she was surprised to be asked to perform a promotional song for Disney’s Return To Oz, and that same month her first play for children, Molly and the Seaweed Hypermarket, was shown on BBC1. She was getting more work on the after-dinner speaking circuit and she was also attempting to write a screenplay, The Natural Order, for her and Walters, which called for a strict domestic regime.
‘I know where everything is. I’m very, very orderly … I pare everything down to the bone so I can just get on with writing. If something can’t go in the washing machine, I don’t buy it,’ she said. Victoria’s workload increased to such an extent that she eventually had to hire domestic help.
Rising at 7 a.m. Victoria breakfasted on mashed banana on toast, or sometimes muesli and skimmed milk, washed down with herbal tea. A huge vat of vegetable soup would be prepared and then she would drive up to Kendal Leisure Centre to swim 40 lengths of front crawl – a healthy hangover from her Nearly A Happy Ending weight-loss regime. On returning home she would begin writing, breaking at around 12.30 for some soup and a walk. On the rare occasions when Geoffrey was not away on tour they would share supper at around 6 p.m. and Geoffrey would appraise her work. The writing would go on until around 8 p.m. and Victoria would unwind by tidying – which she listed as her recreation in her Who’s Who entry. On one occasion she sat in the cellar until 1 a.m., sorting out the nuts and bolts that came with the house. Cleaning was another obsession, and in interviews she would rhapsodise about the joys of cleaning sinks, especially behind the taps.
Victoria Wood Page 17